appease the powers. I think that a lot of work is now becoming similar because of this but also the practice of art and language and talking about it is so fruitful. Maybe there just needs to be a regeneration of what’s talked about and how we look, looking upon our looking needs to be readdressed and then maybe that can come from the infrastructure of the institution and come outwards.
It’s either that the language has become stagnant or that we’re in a real transitory period where nobody is really sure how to deal with what we’re doing.
I feel being in Wales the relationship between man and nature is a lot stronger than anywhere that I’ve been for a long time.
Paul Reas: The issue is about their [students] relation to Wales though, that’s what we’re talking about here isn’t it? It’s true that whilst they’re here, by definition they work in Wales and they have an interest in aspects of Welsh life but the big question is how many of them actually sustain that interrogation of Wales?
CC: I think the only way that you would get people to stay here is if they feel that there is an infrastructure or that there’s a set of values which
they empathise with and also has an economy that enables them to professionalise what they do. Of course the problem is we are living in a small island where most of the economy is centered around the South-East and we can’t get away from that but also, we know that’s never going to be replicated here in Wales.
HS: I think in some ways the Welsh Arts Council could have been more confident in their support of individual artists and I think that’s a really major issue if you can’t get the same opportunities as you can over the border.
But on a positive note, I think there is a younger generation of artists coming out and setting things up in Wales, I think particularly of an ex- student of mine, Anthony Shapland and G39. This was originally an artist –led project which is now in it’s tenth year. There is a much more positive atmosphere on the ground and at the grassroots things are beginning to happen and I am very happy to see that and I think that it just has to be sustained.
Try and get out of this whole thing about comparing oneself to London because I think its something that Scotland has avoided, its more confident.
CC: I think the problem is acute in Wales and Helen flagged up the Arts Council, who in real terms, have dismantled all their specialist art form
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directorships and committees. As a result, they have no expertise now, in any structured way, advising on visual art, dance, drama or any of the other artforms.
GC: it’s ironic that the three cities of Wales are currently undergoing unprecedented regeneration. Yet there does not seem to be a defined strategy for any significant art establishment or institution.
PF: I’m interested in expanding territories as well, talk about Welshness, why does it have to be narrowed down to a box of stereotypes, why can’t we expand it? I think I mentioned it in one of my talks here as well; there was a letter from the Western Mail saying if you flattened Wales out it would be the same size as the United States. That’s quite an interesting idea, how you could magically stretch your own boundaries, pushing, stretching out continuously.
CC: In this post-modern culture we’re living in I don’t think there’s any agreed universal values within art criticism. Clement Greenberg and people with modernist values no longer command the critical airways and you now have very eclectic art criticism where there’s no benchmarked way of working.
You can argue that’s really good because its
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