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.

Benches

Benches are a long-time fascination of mine. I’m talking about benches for sitting on, the types you find in parks and gardens and other communal green spaces, not the ones for preparing food or making things on or those designed for judges.

A simple stone bench overlooking the Plaza de Armas in Cusco, Peru

A pleasing metal and wood construction, also in Cusco, Peru

Though typically simple structures made of wood and/or stone, benches can also be complex artistic creations made of many other materials, and I’ve already blogged about some of those I’ve found. During the six months I lived in Cheshire, I was a frequent visitor to Tatton Park, which has the most delightful collection of benches within its gardens.   

More comfortable that it might appear, this bench overlooks the house at Dunham Massey, in Cheshire, England

Benches for appreciating the views, overlooking the Devon town of Sidmouth and the English Channel, England

And here in Wales, in Cardiff, I was charmed by Gwen Henney’s nine Beastie Benches and others of her creation, the Rhiannon Seating triology, also crafted of carved bricks, as well as the Nina Edge-designed West Close Square terracotta benches.

From the state of Wisconsin, in the USA, benches to share with sculptures: in the picturesque town of Wittenberg and in Green Bay

Before Google+ was closed down, I was a long-time and very active member of the photographic community on that platform, and one of the themes I enjoyed contributing to was #BenchSaturday. The idea was to post photos of benches that were interesting in themselves or were located in interesting places.

Colourful benches in the vibrant surroundings of the Majorelle Gardens in Marrakech, Morocco

A creative Polynesian-themed bench in Auckland's Karangahape Road, New Zealand

The photos I’ve included here are just a few examples from the hundreds I posted on Google+ over the years and, be warned, there will be future blogs on other interesting benches I find. I hope that next time you sit on a bench, you might appreciate better its maker and their skills.

More benches with views: above, on top of the extinct volcanic cone of Mt Richmond and, below, a view over the city centre from another volcano, Mt Eden, both benches in Auckland, New Zealand

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: the Beastie Benches

Cardiff is blessed with some rather lovely public artworks, none more so than the Beastie Benches, a series of nine carved brick benches that can be found in the Britannia Park and Quay area that runs along two sides of Roath Basin at Cardiff Bay.

These are the work of Welsh sculptor Gwen Heeney, a ceramics expert who specialises in working with brick. Her raw materials, the terracotta bricks, came from Dennis of Ruabon, the very same brick and tile company that supplied the decorative panels for the Bay’s iconic Pierhead building more than a hundred years ago.

The Beastie Benches are aptly named. The Beasts were inspired by the mythical creatures brought to life in ‘The Ballad of the Long Legged Bait’, one of the most well-known of famous Welsh poet Dylan Thomas’s poems. It’s a very long poem, too long to reproduce in full in this post, but here’s a link if you fancy a read. 

The poem’s subject matter has been much discussed by critics since Thomas’s early death in 1953 at just 39 years of age. With allusions to literary and scientific works and the Bible, with plays on words and multiple layers of meaning, it may describe Thomas’s own voyage through life, it could be about a series of sexual experiences and their consequences, or it may relate to the search for salvation through the mortification of the flesh.

Heeney has taken lines and phrases from the poem and allowed her imagination to transform these into the mythical creatures that now provide a welcome place to sit on a sunny day. The names of the benches are fascinating enough in themselves: The lured fish under the foam; Sing and howl through sand and anemone; Thrown to the sea in the shell of a girl; Venus lies star-struck in her wound; Bird after dark; and the laughing fish; In the continent of a fossil; Turns the moon-chained and water-wound Metropolis of fishes; and There is nothing left of the sea.

I dare you to sit on one of these and not be inspired to write your own poem or paint a vivid picture. 

The lured fish under the foam

Sing and howl through sand and anemone

Thrown to the sea in the shell of a girl

Venus lies star-struck in her wound

Bird after dark (It seems the bird has been the subject of some after-dark shenanigans!)

and the laughing fish

In the continent of a fossil

Turns the moon-chained and water-wound Metropolis of fishes

There is nothing left of the sea