The Poetics of Place
Industrial South Wales
John Wilson, Guest Curator
Newport Museum and Art Gallery (2004-07)
- THE POETICS OF PLACE: An exhibition of paintings exploring the Welsh industrial scene, selected from the permanent collections of the Newport Museum and Art Gallery
Exhibition theme |The Poetics of Place
- THE POETICS OF PLACE: INDUSTRIAL SOUTH WALES | This exhibition collates art works representing the South Wales industrial scene in the post-'45 period from the permanent collections of the Newport Museum and Art Gallery .
Through the 1950s and '60s a lively contemporary Welsh art scene was emerging with an iconography of the coalfield as its hallmark. Building on the new patronage opportunity of the Welsh Committee of the Arts Council of Great Britain and supplemented by the energetic activities of voluntary and artist-led bodies, the burgeoning South Wales art scene nurtured both amateur and professional artists and commanded the attention of artists and critics at the wider UK level.
Many of the images in this selection from the Newport Museum and Art Gallery permanent collections relate to this lively cultural moment. Coalminer, pit-head, slag-heap, miners' cage, steelworks, and terraced row: the iconography of industrial south Wales now became grist to the mill for the contemporary Welsh artist.
This phase of painting of the Welsh industrial landscape stands as a counterpart to the earlier cultural achievement of the Welsh industrial novel.
Read more | John Wilson, Curatorial reflection: The Poetics of Place
Resources | The Poetics of Place
- Video - the exhibition hanging
- BBC Radio Wales | Inspired | Mon 27 Aug 2007 | LS Lowry and the industrial landscape of the Rhymney and Blaenau Gwent valleys.
- Archived Newport Museum and Art Gallery web-page here| archived catalogue and essay here (pdf).
Acknowledgements
The Poetics of Place is produced by John Wilson, Guest Curator, working in collaboration with Roger Cucksey, Keepr of Art, Newport Museum and Art Gallery.
The Poetics of Place is the first project in the Explorations series, showcasing works of art in the permanent collections of the Newport Museum and Art Gallery.
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