Cardiff Bay: Adventurers Quay artworks

This is Adventurers Quay, a large residential development on the edge of Roath Basin in Cardiff Bay and, as you can see, around the ground floor of the building, at pedestrian eye level, there's an artwork.

The artwork, which was installed in 1999, has two components, one a mosaic of ceramic sails coloured blue and white, the other, perhaps less obvious, the grilles that cover the window openings to the car park inside the building.

The 'Terracotta Sails' mosaic is the work of ceramicist David Mackie (b. 1965), a prolific artist whose website lists completed artworks dating from 1994 to 2024, several of which can be seen in the Cardiff area. As well as the highly glazed sails, there's an undulating row of terracotta bricks fashioned to resemble a rope running along the lower part of the artwork. I quite like this piece, though I think the concept lacks imagination, sails being a very common theme among the artworks around Cardiff Bay.

Passers-by might be forgiven for not realising that the 11 steel grilles covering the car park openings are an artwork, so simple are they. These are the work of Andrew Rowe (b. 1963), whose DAR Design website describes him as a 'designer, sculptor and artist blacksmith', who works 'to commission, providing unique design solutions for public art, architectural metalwork, street furniture and sculpture'.

Cardiff Bay: Blue Beacon

I'd walked past this artwork many times before I paused to look at it more closely, possibly because it's located outside Bute Town Police Station, and I've never thought it a good idea to be seen lingering outside police stations. 

I've called this blog 'Blue Beacon' but I've also seen this artwork called 'Lighthouse' and 'Blue Light' – I'm not sure which is correct. 

According to his website, this piece was designed by British sculptor Mark Renn (1952–2019), with assistance in the design development and fabrication management from Mick Thacker. 

The 60-foot-tall stainless steel construction is the work of 'A1 Stainless, South Wales Monuments, Richard Williams', and there's also an LED lighting system that produces a pulsing blue light at night. 

The granite base of the structure is inscribed with a poem, 'The Ballast Bank', from the publication Zen Cymru, by Peter Finch. 

You can read the poem in full on Finch's website, which offers the following explanation for the piece and its relevance to the location:

The Ballast Bank is a poem by Peter Finch which has been incorporated into Renn and Thackers' Blue Light public artwork at the entrance to the South Wales Police Headquarters on James Street, Cardiff. This station is built very near where in the early days of Cardiff as a trading port stood a quarter mile bank of off-loaded ballast. This had been dumped by arriving ships making space for their outgoing cargoes of iron and coal. The Bank is clearly visible on John Wood's late 1830s map of the town.

The artwork puts some of that ballast bank back. The poem delineates the races, language groupings, trades and ideas which flowed in and out of the burgeoning industrial town as it exponentially developed. In its original form the poem circled Renn and Thacker's silver tower to run across the station entrance steps, in through the doors, up across reception finishing on the reception desk's surface.

According to the newspaper Wales Online, there seems to have been some controversy and criticism about the erection of this artwork, not surprising when you consider that upwards of £70,000 of taxpayers' money was used to pay for it in 2013.

Cardiff Bay: Triple spout

I admit to never having noticed this fountain until I found it mentioned in the Cardiff Public Art Register; the register is available as a downloadable pdf, though be aware that it seems not to have been updated since 2008 and, in the interim period, some artworks have been vandalised, many have suffered damage and not been repaired, at least one has been relocated, and, despite Cardiff Council's history of neglect, more artworks have appeared around the city. 

The reason I hadn't previously noticed the 'Triple Spout' is that it's located in a hole in the ground in Cardiff Bay's Roald Dahl Plass. According to the Register entry, the location is 'a deep D shaped feeder pit that was historically used for balancing water levels in the adjacent Oval Basin'. 

The fountain is the work of British sculptor William Pye and was installed in 2000. Pye specialises in sculptures involving water; his website says he 'is inspired by the extraordinary qualities of water and fascinated by the natural laws of hydrostatics and how these can be manipulated'. Scrolling through the list of works on Pye's website I realised that I've seen at least one other previously, the font in Salisbury Cathedral, which I included in a blog written in January 2017, Salisbury Cathedral by day.