We have been placed into groups to work together to either create individual displays or one installation as a group.
We were asked to find a venue around the Swansea area and this is my journey of finding a suitable venue for a two day exhibition in November. This exhibition is to be promoted using marketing tools and is open to the public.
On receiving the brief last week I decided to take a walk to a relatively new development of Swansea named SA1. It is the old Swansea docks which is steeped in history and has been developed into a stylish area of bars, restaurants, cafes, studios and offices.
There is a Norwegian Church sadly placed in the development of SA1. The small Norwegian church stands alone against the modern skyline on one side and the old warehouse on the other side divided by the manmade lake. It lays empty.
The history to this building is interesting, it has been literally taken apart three times to be placed three locations. It moved from Newport to Swansea in 1909 and carefully restored only to be moved again in 2004. It was building of great comfort for the Norwegian Seamen. With the history attached to the building I hope it will make a great space for this site specific project. There are many aspects to consider with this project. Are you sympathetic to the building bringing the history into the present or do you distort the building? This is a group project so do you work as a collaboration or do you work alone in a group?
With all the research given to us in the lecture on Tuesday, I have found a fascination for Michael Craig Martin and Krzysztof Wodiczko. I have a love of architecture and these two artists use buildings as there canvas to express themselves.
I have looked into the history of this building but the feeling of the building as it lays empty of how sad it seemed. I read ‘Krzysztof Wodiczko began developing his public projections in 1980 interfacing the facades of urban architecture – whether public monuments, public buildings, or corporate architecture – with images of the body to juxtapose the physical space of architecture with the psycho-social space of the public realm. “In the process of our socialization,” the artist writes, “the very first contact with a public building is no less important than the moment of social confrontation with the father, through which our sexual role and place in society [are] constructed. Early socialization through patriarchal sexual discipline is extended by the later socialization through the institutional architecturalization of our bodies. Thus the spirit of the father never dies, continuously living as it does in the building which was, is, and will be embodying, structuring, mastering, representing, and reproducing his ‘eternal’ and ‘universal’ presence as a patriarchal wisdom-body of power.”
There is something in the above statement. Sometimes a building only comes to life for the people. As people we build homes or offices for comfort. What struck me was the sadness of the Norwegian Church being left empty. Thinking of my sadness I would like to propose to bring some life into the church that was once loved by the Norwegian Seamen. Which leads me to the fascination of the Norwegian connection to Swansea. There is a lot to think about. The history, location or locations in this case, the space and the direction to which to go …
This is some of the research for the Norwegian Church I found in the library before I received a rejection letter from the estate agency regarding holding an installation.
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