Do you remember when Paul Davies (Grwp Beca) and a group of arts students from the Arts foundation course at Bangor went to Llyn Alaw on Anglesey for co-creating a muddy Map of Wales? Or do you remember 1977 when Meredydd Davies, Maeyc Hewitt, Wil Jones, Stephen Davies, Celyn Davies and Alan Holmes and others shot their Super 8 splatter films in various locations around Bangor? Or have you been on High Street in June 2021, when Rhona Bowey, Lindsey Colbourne, Lisa Hudson, Emily Meilleur, Steph Shipley and Wanda Zyborska, all dressed as social -distancing crones roamed Bangor, handing out cake and plants? Or maybe you witnessed how – one lockdown day in 2020, a silver when a group of five crone dressed women were handing out cake and flowers on Bangor High Street, or do you recall a silver Suzuki Alto was floating through Maesgeirchen, its drivers spreading poetry into the streets with a megaphone?
Wales bears millions of these odd moments, when something not quite normal happens, art emerges and changes place and time, sometimes only for a short moment, sometimes for weeks, sometimes forever. But too often these moments are not well documented, remain oral history or anecdotes ... or often fall into oblivion. Oblivion ... too often a Welsh thing.
We want to change this, we seek for bringing these moments back to life ... in conversations, in revisiting sites, in re-enacting – and we are seeking for making the past, the present and the future dance together. Maybe we will realise that there is a Welsh tradition of Avant-Garde art practices out there – maybe under the radar, but as relevant as ever.
Sarah Pogoda invites artists, members of the community and academics to explore Avant-Garde arts practices in Wales, their history and our memories of predecessors. With a series of events – ranging from performances, discussions, artistic experiments to talks – Sarah wishes to start the collective exploration this early summer. Please do join her. All events are free of charge, some are bi-lingual, some might not, some are multi-lingual, some are not.
If you cannot make it to one of the events, but you still have stories, documents, photos, film or other you want share, please get in touch with Sarah.