Cardiff art: Three Ellipses

If you’ve ever walked over the Cardiff Bay Barrage, you might have noticed splotches of yellow paint, seemingly splattered randomly around the lock area, under your feet, on parts of railings and halves of benches, partially covering life buoys, swiped across fixtures and fittings. It’s really quite bizarre!

As well as being the colour of sunshine and warmth, yellow is also a colour of caution, warning of the need to be careful, to take safety precautions, so painting surfaces yellow can indicate trip hazards, concealed danger, potential obstacles. But that doesn’t seem to be the case here.

The colour yellow is also known for its high visibility, which is why it’s often used on road safety signage, on ambulances, police vehicles and fire engines. The colour can be seen, the painted shapes recognised from a distance. Now maybe we’re getting closer to an explanation of the Barrage blotches?

There’s only one way to solve this mystery, and that’s to stand in one specific spot on the Barrage near the locks and look seaward. Only then can you see, in its entirety, the amazing artwork that is Three Eclipses for Three Locks.

The brainchild of Swiss artist, Felice Varini, who specialises in optical illusional artworks, this piece was painted on the Barrage in March 2007, by a team that included professional mountain climbers to paint the less accessible spaces. I love it for the way it challenges the mind of the viewer to figure out and complete the fragmented puzzle but I do think it’s time the Cardiff Harbour Authority repainted it. It would be a great shame, and a huge waste of the initial cost of £25,000, if this piece was allowed to fade into obscurity.

Cardiff art : Cader Idris

I’ve sat and eaten my lunch on it, I’ve sheltered in its lee from driving wind and rain, but it was only recently that I finally found out more about this hulking artwork.

This is Cader Idris, a sculpture that was first sited in the large square outside Cardiff Central Station in 1999 but was moved ten years later to Cardiff Bay Wetlands Reserve. As the English section of the inscription on the plaque adjacent to the sculpture reads:

The mountains, lakes and valleys of Wales have inspired this sculpture, and in particular Cader Idris, in Snowdonia.

Naturally, many Welsh poets have found similar inspiration and it is those verses which reflect this subject that have been chosen here. All of them are by Welsh poets and in their original language, be it Welsh or English. The englyn is a unique verse form characterised by the particular setting of the lines. Four englynion are included in this selection, and the one by Rhys Dafis was especially composed for this sculpture.

At this point I was somewhat confused by the references to poetry inscriptions as I hadn’t noticed any – more on that below.

Cader Idris was created by William Pye, a London-born artist who studied sculpture at the Royal College of Art from 1961 to 1965, and has since taught and exhibited his work in museums and art galleries around the world. Although the design and dimensions of the Cardiff work were very much influenced by the Welsh mountains, Pye writes that many of his other creations have been inspired ‘by the extraordinary qualities of water and [he is] fascinated by the natural laws of hydrostatics and how these can be manipulated.’ Some of you may have seen the magnificent font he created for Salisbury Cathedral in 2008, or perhaps you’ve seen the shimmering Slipstream as you’ve passed through Gatwick Airport’s north terminal, or you may have encountered Chalice, within the precincts of 123 Buckingham Palace Road in London. Pye is a prolific creator and the list of his works is a long one.   

Returning to Cader Idris, Pye writes that his inspiration came partly from a painting of the mountain by Richard Wilson (1714-82), which Pye says ‘has been a particular favourite of mine since my schooldays and holidays in Wales. This painting has inspired me to create a number of sculptures, the Cader Idris Series.’      

Cader Idris is 13 feet (4 metres) tall and made from a combination of Woodkirk sandstone and Welsh blue pennant slate, which the sculptor explains as follows on his website: ‘Water is inferred at the centre of the structure where the darker pennant stone represents a cwm (circular lake) at the foot of an escarpment.’ Pye goes on: ‘The bronze element of the sculpture suggests a rock outcrop and is set with verses in Welsh and English, all by Welsh poets.’

Now I was even more confused, as it seems I had missed both poetry inscriptions and the ‘bronze element’, so I returned to the sculpture for another look. Still nothing. Then, after much searching, I discovered that the artwork was altered when it was moved. When it was located in central Cardiff, it had a small step built into one side and, more importantly, there was an additional rectangular piece adjacent to the stone ‘mountain’, a piece that was made of bronze and that had the poetry, the englyns, inscribed on one side. (There’s a photo of the original artwork on the VADS website here.)   

I haven’t been able to find any explanation for why the artwork was altered. Nor have I discovered what happened to the ‘bronze element’. To my eye, though Cader Idris still has a significant visual impact in its new setting, the piece has been diminished and much of its meaning obscured by the loss of the 'outcrop' and its poetry, and that seems a great shame.

Cardiff art : Celtic Ring

My last blog, Under my feet: a key, was an introduction to today’s post on the public artwork that surrounds that ‘key’, which is both a name plate for the artwork and a waymarker to locate the beginning of the Taff Trail. 

The Cardiff Bay Development Corporation (CBDC) was established in 1987 to regenerate the docklands, which had by that time become a wasteland of disused docks and abandoned buildings. As part of their regeneration plan, the CBDC commissioned a series of public artworks to complement the many new building programmes: the Celtic Ring is one of those commissioned pieces.

It was created by sculptor Harvey Hood in 1993. Though born in Staffordshire and educated both in Birmingham (at the Birmingham College of Art) and London (at the Royal College of Art), Hood has spent much of his adult life in Wales. After completing his MA in London, he moved to the Cardiff College of Art, where he eventually progressed to Head of the Sculpture Department. Though now retired from university teaching, and from his 30 years as director of the Berlanderi Sculpture Workshop near Raglan, Hood continues to create amazing works of sculpture. He has exhibited both nationally and internationally, and his work is held in public and private collections around the world.

On Harvey Hood’s personal website there is an excellent blog post that documents, using many fascinating images, the process involved in the creation of the Celtic Ring. It moves from Hood’s sketching his initial ideas on the shores of the Bay before the Barrage was built, to the intriguing process of manufacturing the artwork, from clay mould to plaster cast to fibreglass to bronze.  

As you can see from my photos of the Ring’s interior, its surface is textured with many features relating to the maritime and industrial environment in which it is located. As well as references to local landmarks like the Norwegian Church, the former Hamadryad Hospital ship, and several of the local docks, there are seafaring instruments and tidal charts. It is a remarkable artwork that has stood well the test of time since its creation almost thirty years ago.

Cardiff : an assortment of benches

We’ve all been discouraged from sitting on benches during the lockdown but, when this pandemic is finally over (or at least controlled to the point where we are able to resume some semblance of normal life), these lovely benches will be there for the good folks of Cardiff and its visitors to rest their weary legs while out walking.

The aptly named Ship in a bottle bench was installed at the top of the meadow overlooking Cardiff Bay Wetland Reserve in 2004. This bottle bench is the work of artist Melissa Gibbs who, according to her profile on London’s Artist Quarter website, is ‘a professional artist and art tutor living and working in London’. Gibbs makes ‘sculpture and installations for public and private commissions and exhibitions’.

World-renowned author Roald Dahl was born in Cardiff in 1916 so it’s probably not surprising that Cardiff likes to celebrate its famous son in diverse ways in various locations around the city. Cardiff Bay already had Roald Dahl Plas (Square) when, in August 2016, as part of the Roald Dahl centenary celebrations, a 10-metre-long crocodile sculpture became the latest addition to the Dahl memorabilia.

The Croc in the Dock sculpture, located near the Sails on the Barrage, was based on the character in the book The Enormous Crocodile. It is supposed to be a bench but it’s really too low for comfort so it’s become a fun sculpture for kids to clamber on. 

And that is probably why there is now an actual bench right next to the crocodile. Appropriately enough, the bench is shaped like a book, the back of the bench is painted with the book's front cover illustration, and it too is named The Enormous Crocodile.

If you choose to walk from Cardiff Bay back in to the city along the Taff Trail, then you might rest your sore feet awhile (but not during lockdown) with a seat on one of four similar wrought-iron benches positioned alongside the River Taff. I haven’t been able to uncover any information about their creator but I quite like the paddle steamer and lighthouse that have been incorporated into the design.

Under my feet : Principality Stadium

Rugby fans around the world will, I’m sure, be familiar with Cardiff’s Millennium – now Principality Stadium. Built in the late 1990s, after Wales had won the right to stage the 1999 Rugby World Cup, the stadium was constructed in the central city, a rugby ball’s throw from Cardiff Castle, adjacent to the still-extant Cardiff Arms Park, and on the site of the old Empire swimming pool.

But this post is not about the stadium itself (you can read more about that on its website). The stadium sits alongside the River Taff, and there is a riverside walkway that takes the pedestrian past one of the stadium’s entrances. There, under your feet, you can see a series of mosaic panels representing the nations that took part in the 1999 World Cup. 

The main countries have their own panels, with one that lumps together the ‘other nations’ – I’m not sure which they were. The panels show the flags of the various nations, together with symbols of those nations. 

The New Zealand panel shown here includes a sheep, a kiwi and what is probably meant to be a tuatara (the lizard-type creature); a dolphin and a whale; a silver fern, red pohutukawa flowers and what’s probably meant to be a fern (as we do not have coconut palms in New Zealand); a sailing ship, a Maori canoe and, presumably, the ceremonial gateway into a Maori pa; a koru (unfurling fern frond) and one other item (top left), which I haven’t yet figured out. 

The mosaics themselves are crude but I like the idea behind them and, twenty years on, they are still in reasonably good condition.

Cardiff art : 'Wife on the Ocean Wave'

It seems a shame that this charming sculpture is not better positioned. Sitting between two of the three former Mount Stuart graving docks (once dry, now water filled) in Cardiff Bay, it’s half-way down a dead-end space, where there’s no other reason to venture except for a closer view of the sculpture. And so I seldom see – in fact, have never seen – anyone inspecting the terrific trio in their tiny tub.

Punningly titled, Wife on the Ocean Wave, this wonderful piece was created by sculptor Graham Ibbeson in 1993. In the artist statement on his website, Ibbeson explains the inspiration behind all his artworks:

I have always tried to use humour as a tool to draw people into my work, to enable them to look at themselves through laughter. My work has changed over many years of moving forward through the creative landscape, however, my motivation remains the same. I am influenced by the absurdities of this life and the people who inhabit my world. The small, tiny things that make up the whole picture, hoping as always, that humour opens a path to the truth.

Ibbeson succeeds brilliantly, in this and in the 30-something other sculptures that improve and enhance public spaces throughout Britain. (Click on this link to see a gallery of his public sculptures on the author’s website.)  

Back to the boat, and its three delightful figures, a woman, a man and a young lad. The elderly gentleman looks gleeful, his eyes glinting, a  boyish look of genuine fun-loving joy lighting up his face.

The woman looks more hesitant – there’s no open-mouth smile on her. Perhaps she’s a reluctant passenger in the tub. Perhaps she can’t swim.

And the lad – his face is the hardest to read, as he reaches one hand through the wave. Is he concentrating on something he sees? On grabbing what he has seen? And what is his hand reaching for? Why, a cute little fish, of course. The perfect finishing touch to this charming piece.

Constructed originally in fibre glass, then cast in bronze, Wife on the Ocean Wave stands 152cm tall. Access to it is unrestricted so, next time you visit Cardiff Bay, do make the effort to see it. Opposite Techniquest, on the finger of land between graving docks two and three, under the looming menace of a huge old cargo crane, follow the meandering path for a heartwarming laugh.

Cardiff : Billy the seal

Once upon a time (1912, to be more precise) there was a seal named Billy, who was accidentally caught in trawler nets off the Irish coast (though there is some doubt about that location) and brought to Cardiff to join the menagerie of a small zoo in Victoria Park (why they couldn’t just have let Billy go, I don’t know).

Billy had his own small lake and, because of his amusing antics, was a great favourite with all the children who visited the park. Stories are told of the many times Billy escaped the confines of the park: the River Ely used to flood, which in turn flooded Victoria Park and adjacent Cowbridge Road, and Billy took advantage of these artificial waterways to visit the Fish Market (of course!), to say hello to the Mayor in City Hall, to check out the waters of Roath Park Lake and the fountain in nearby Thompson’s Park. But, each time Billy made a break for freedom, he was found and captured and returned to the confines of Victoria Park.

Billy even survived being put on short rations for a time in 1917 (by a council trying to save money – nothing’s changed then) – it seems his many admirers came to his rescue by supplementing his rations with succulent titbits.

Billy finally died in 1939, not a bad innings for a grey seal. His body was sent to the National Museum of Wales (just a few miles down the road from Victoria Park) where a post-mortem showed that Billy was not a male at all. All those times she escaped, she might well have been looking for a mate. And Billy’s skeleton was put on display in the museum from time to time, to help educate the next generation of young kids.

And, because she had been so loved by the local Cardiffians, when the centenary of Victoria Park was being celebrated in 1997, Billy was also immortalised in stone (well, actually, painted galvanised steel). Almost sixty years after she had died, Billy the sculpture was created by Cardiff artist David Petersen and placed next to the paddling pond in Victoria Park, where she had lived all those years before. And, despite occasional plans to get rid of her sculpture (like during a recent redesign of the play area, when a splash pad was added to the park), Billy’s supporters and fans have spoken up for their beloved seal and stopped the council from trashing her.

And the physical Billy (or, at least, her skeleton) now lives in the Clore Discovery Gallery of the National Museum but, very occasionally (okay, just the once), Bill gets to see outside the thick walls of the museum. As you can read in Billy’s blog on the museum website, in 2012, one hundred years after being hauled in by that trawler, Billy was taken to the seaside. And, not only that, Billy got to star in the television programme Coast alongside presenter Miranda Krestovnikoff.

Sadly, Billy is now back at the museum, doomed (probably) to remain behind those thick walls for the rest of eternity. But perhaps (just perhaps) Billy knows about her statue in Victoria Park. And perhaps (okay, a bit fanciful) Billy can look through that statue’s eyes and see the fun the kids are having playing about in the water fountains of the park’s splash pad. And maybe (just maybe) Billy remembers the fun she used to have playing in the water there as well.

Cardiff art: ‘People Like Us’

This is one of my favourite public artworks in Cardiff. 

It stands in one of the busiest areas of Cardiff Bay, amidst the cafes, restaurants and bars of Mermaid Quay, so I had to wait for a cold winter morning to get the photo, at right, with no people around.

The sculpture, called ‘People Like Us’ (‘Pobl Fel Ni’ in Welsh), is aptly named, as it certainly attracts people: they insinuate themselves amongst the figures for photos, lean next to the man as if engaging him in conversation, and children pat the dog as if it’s a favourite household pet.

‘People Like Us’ is a life-size bronze artwork by English sculptor John Clinch (1934 - 2001), whose intention was ‘to make something that somehow ‘gave a voice”’ to the diverse cultural and ethnic mix of people who have always lived and worked in the dockland area of Cardiff.

If the body structure of the male in this sculpture looks familiar, it’s because John Clinch also designed ‘From Pit To Port’, a sculpture celebrating Cardiff’s mining heritage that featured in a previous blog post here.

‘People Like Us’ is a much more personable sculpture I think, one that people can easily relate to, one that conveys a sense of rest and relaxation – the woman with her shoe off is a delightful touch.

I think John Clinch would be very pleased with how well his work is appreciated by those who visit Cardiff Bay.

Cardiff art: Nereid

Nereid is one of over 200 public artworks to be found in Cardiff, and I think it’s one of the more beautiful. Sculpted in bronze and standing on a base that may be polished granite, she’s an impressive piece that is around 183cm tall, on a base that’s 152cm tall.

Nereids are the sea nymphs of Greek mythology, companions of Poseidon, god of the ocean waves, and helpers of those sailors and fishermen who get caught in dangerous storms (they assisted Jason and the Argonauts in their search for the Golden Fleece).

Tradition tells that there were 50 Nereids, all daughters of Nereus and Doris, but more than 50 have been named in the ancient works of Homer, Hesiod and the like, so, like all mythology, the story is a little flexible.

This particular Nereid has no name. She balances on a wave, above a shoal of fish, and gazes at a seabird that has alighted on her outstretched left hand. She’s the work of British sculptor and Fellow of the Royal British Society of Sculptors, Nathan David, who has a long and impressive list of work to his credit, both public commissions and private work, in Britain and around the world.

I find some of his work rather solid and static but, as in this animated Nereid, he excels at depicting movement. One of his most well-known works is a life-size bronze of ballerina Dame Margot Fonteyn, which can be found at her birthplace in Reigate, Surrey.

Cardiff art: More places to sit

Way back in March, I showed you the Beastie Benches, a series of nine terracotta benches, sculpted by artist Gwen Heeney who got her inspiration from by the mythical creatures in Dylan Thomas’s poem ‘The Ballad of the Long Legged Bait’.

Here is another set of Henney’s wondrous carved brick benches. The simplest of the three (below left) is the Mussel Bench, which pulls together a series of mussel shells to form a bench, but one much more comfortable than the real mussel shells could ever be. I have to say I don’t quite see the shells here but perhaps I should’ve looked more closely at the other side of the bench instead of just sitting on it.

Sitting cheek by jowl with the Mussel Bench is Rhiannon Seating, which is also the collective name for this group of benches located in Barquentine Place, near Cardiff Bay. Rhiannon, which translates as ‘Great Queen’, is a central figure in Welsh mythology, in the stories related in the Mabinogian. She personifies the ancient concept of the Earth Goddess or Earth Mother.

What amazes me with this artwork is the fluidity Heeney has achieved with a material that is, basically, a pile of rectangular, sharp-edged building blocks. Rhiannon looks completely relaxed, enjoying a comfortable snooze in the sun. And those feet! If you tickle them, will the sleeping giantess awaken?

The third bench that completes this 1999 trilogy is Sleeping Partner, a mystical male figure who is also sleeping away his days. It almost seems a shame to sit on him in case he too awakens from his peaceful slumber.

This second terracotta artwork is also for sitting on but it has an entirely different feel to Gwen Heeney’s work. Dating from 1993, designed by Nina Edge and created by ceramicist David Mackie, West Close Square can be found in Cardiff’s inner city suburb of Butetown. It is a multi-cultural community, whose many and varied ethnic roots are reflected in the decoration of the ceramic panels that surround the central circular piece.

                                            

  In an article entitled ‘Pass the Parcel: Art, Agency, Culture and Community’, Nina Edge tells the wonderful story of how this piece came into being through the enthusiasm of a group of creative women from the Butetown community where she was then living:

As far as they were concerned, they had a neighbourhood artist -- like they had a hairdresser, a cook and a singer. They had no interest in approaching other artists. So the administration bent to the gentle insistence of the young women, who in turn knew and pursued the aims of their wider community.
 

The result is West Close Square, an artwork that has transformed a vacant lot on a council estate into a space where the local people can come together ‘to show off, sit, play, chew ghat, smoke weed and meet’.

Cardiff art: A celebration of mining

Wales and coal mining go together like bread and butter. In fact, coal mining was the bread and butter of many Welsh men for many a year, and none more so than in the Valleys north of Cardiff. From valleys and men stained black with its soot and dust, the black gold of coal flowed down the innumerable railway lines to the port of Cardiff and thence by ship to power industries in Britain and around the world.

It’s no surprise, then, to find that many of Cardiff’s public artworks pay tribute to the industry that put Cardiff on the world map and to the 250,000 men who slaved and sometimes died underground to extract the coal that powered that industry. Over time, though, the styles of the artworks have changed rather dramatically.

This first grouping sits outside the Edwardian-era Glamorgan Building, formerly Cardiff’s County Hall but now home to the Schools of Social Sciences, Planning and Geography within Cardiff University. Two groups of statues sit adjacent to the building’s main entrance, one group representing navigation and the other, shown here, coal mining. The statues were sculpted between 1908 and 1912 by Albert Hemstock Hodge (1875-1917), a Scottish artist who specialised in architectural sculptures like these, and were originally intended to go on the roof of the building. Maybe the Portland stone proved too heavy for that lofty perch!

Hodge’s style is reminiscent of Classical Greek sculpture though, to my eye, his work shows none of the grace and elegance of the Greeks. The work is allegorical: from the helmet she wears and the shield on her right arm, one of the two seated female figures can be identified as Minerva, Roman goddess of trade and industry. She appears to be receiving a gift of a basket of coal from the front male figure. To see the real miners in this group, though, you need to climb the entrance stairs and take a look at the back of the statue. Here, one man is straining to push a tram full of coal, while another uses his pick to help pull the heavy load.

Though rugged and well-muscled workers, these two don’t resemble any Welsh men I’ve ever seen! But then neither does the collier in this more recent artwork. 

As one critic commented ‘The statue looks more like a pumped-up male model than a raw-boned Welsh miner’.

Titled ‘From Pit to Port’, this bronze and wrought iron work was designed and partly constructed by John Clinch (1934-2001) but completed by Jon Buck after Clinch died. 

Unveiled in 2005, it stands alongside Roath Dock in Cardiff Bay, celebrating the connection between mining and the port from where the coal was shipped far and wide.