Bedwyr Williams and the Starry Messenger: An Amateur Convention in Consideration of Wales in Venice
Friday 15 March 2013, 11–5pm
St Fagans National History Museum
Cardiff CF5 6XB, Wales, UK
“If you don’t mind I would like you to take a few moments and withdraw from this communiqué and imagine yourselves as moles. I would like you to zone out, take your fingertips away from the track-pad, breathe out and relax. Picture yourselves as velvety pelted big-clawed moles. Your personalities and your interests should remain unchanged. It’s you but as a clever mole with an interest in visual art. In my head I’ve kitted you out in plain white t-shirts and jeans but if you wish to customise your appearance, and as people of the arts I guess that you will, then by all means do so.
Let’s get out of here. We will be going down and then out. We tunnel briefly through the concrete, which will be hard going for some of you but some of you stronger ones can front the peloton for now to get us going.
Some clay, rubble, the predictable cache of clay pipes with their snapped stems and some dark and smelly organic material that is disconcertingly easy for you to tunnel through that makes you panic and gag at the same time. I can’t tell you what it is but you are soon through it.
After an hour or so we surface in the back garden of a semi-detached house. The evening air is cool and your keen noses pick up the smell of a supermarket some 500 yards away but we aren’t here for that.
I have brought you to the garden of a keen amateur astronomer and if I can ask you to turn towards the house, you will make him out in the kitchen window drinking coffee, looking out into the night. The mug is a scaled-down replica of a reflector telescope.
He appears in silhouette to you, but you can tell that he is a middle-aged man.
We are going to try and get into the house for a closer look. There is good cover for you moles if you stick close to the flower beds but for your own sakes please be quiet and let’s try not to trigger the security light.
If you moles could pair up we will enter in through the slightly grubby cat flap. I’m asking you to do this in twos so that you can exert enough pressure to open the flap.
You plop neatly onto the doormat and then congregate behind the bin, which in terms of its shape is not dissimilar to a mole-sized observatory.
The astronomer is stood in the window in a kind of half trance because he is getting a buzz from seeing his observatory with a starry night above it. So whilst he should be in there with his telescope, breathing through his nose chomping on the eyepiece with his baggy eye he’s actually getting some pleasure from looking at his hobby. The brochure he had thumbed for months showed a scene not unlike this.
This man is observing his observatory.”
In anticipation of the 2013 Cymru yn Fenis Wales in Venice exhibition, MOSTYN and Oriel Davies present aPre-Venice Convention, Bedwyr Williams and The Starry Messenger.
Contributors include Dr. Haley Gomez, Cardiff University, who explores cosmic dust and the secrets of the cosmos; amateur astronomer Moelwyn Thomas considers astrophotography; artist Thomas Goddard delves into the archive of the Beast of Bala; Daryl Green, St Andrews University, discusses Nasmyth and Carpenter’s 19th century book, The Moon Considered as a Planet, a World, and a Satellite.
The Convention will be followed by
A Starry Comedy Night, featuring Bedwyr Williams and guests
8pm till late at Porter’s Cardiff, Cardiff City Centre, CF10 2FE
Bedwyr Williams’s exhibition, The Starry Messenger, will show at the Ludoteca Santa Maria Ausiliatrice, Castello, Venice, 1 June–24 November 2013.
The project is jointly curated by MOSTYN and Oriel Davies and supported by Arts Council of Wales.
Bedwyr Williams is represented by Ceri Hand Gallery, London
Media contacts
Welsh Media:
Siân James on 029 2044 1344 / 07812 801356 / sian.james [at] artswales.org.uk
Other UK & International:
Emma Pettit or Stephanie Knox at Margaret on +44 (0) 20 7923 2861 /
emma [at] margaretlondon.com / steph [at] margaretlondon.com
Wales in Venice social media: Facebook / Twitter
