It had all the makings of something brilliant. Allen Ginsberg, LSD and the holdings of the National Museum of Wales. The ingredients for museum magic had all been carefully selected, and yet, the end flavour was something quite bland. This was the overwhelming, or perhaps underwhelming would be a more apt description, feeling that I was left with on leaving the latest exhibition to fill the contemporary art wing of the National Museum. Wales Visitation: Poetry, Romanticism and Myth in Art starts with a bang, and then fizzles into familiar territory and oft trod paths. It had the makings of brilliance, the end result was someway short. The latest exhibition to occupy the first floor of the National Museum takes its inspiration from a poem, crafted by Allen Ginsberg during an LSD driven journey through the Black Mountains. The poem itself is a giddy but recognizable work. There is no doubt that the verses of Wales Visitation are ones which embrace the ancient landscape through a subverted lense of perception, and yet, the reality Ginsberg creates is one that will trigger the memory of anyone to have taken a walk through that same setting. The Welsh landscape, as inspiration, sets the tone for the gallery themes to come. Sadly though, the altered realities enjoyed in the verse, have little impact on the interpretations to come. Wales Visitation certainly opens impressively. Visitors are unavoidably confronted by a giant projection of Ginsberg. This frantic, bearded face looms over the entry way, leaving those who enter in little doubt as to who has provided the initial inspiration for the overall exhibition. Opposite Ginsberg’s projected performance, are Thomas Jones’ The Bard, and Iolo Morganwg’s bardic alphabet. It all resonates with elements of Ginsberg’s poem and mention of bards, and connects the 1960s work with a historical Welsh narrative of poetic imaginings and bardic tradition. It serves as an effective juxtaposition and, for the National Museum, a reasonably innovative opening to an exhibition. Sadly, from this point on, everything becomes terribly safe and common. While the inclusion of several offerings from Graham Sutherland certainly further the concept of the Welsh landscape inspiring artists, Sutherland’s very inclusion serves to undermine any sense of challenge that this exhibition might pose, put simply, we have been here before in this museum. Once more, Richard Long’s Blaenau Ffestiniog Circle is rolled out, just as it was when the contemporary art galleries were first opened three years ago. The same might be said of the ever wonderful Glory Glory by Laura Ford. This fantastical reimagining of traditional Welsh costume adds a sense of the macabre and the uncanny to the exhibition, but it is far from a new addition to these galleries. Perhaps though it is not so much the familiarity of the works of art on show here, but the way in which they are displayed. Walking through the gallery, I kept asking myself ‘where is the LSD?’ Not wanting the National Museum to plunge headfirst into the inconceivable, I had at least hoped that the exhibition design would have challenged me as much as the collections. In the end, Wales Visitation becomes a harmless, standard exhibition. No chances are taken, nothing about the exhibit stands out as distinctive or, frankly, memorable. It’s a terrible shame, because when I first became aware of the concept, I wanted to be challenged, I wanted to be wowed. Ultimately, I wanted the National Museum Wales to show us that its approach to contemporary art displays could amount to something more than pattern match programmes. The collections allow for the memorable, but Wales Visitation becomes Wales Forgettable all too quickly. A side grumble – there is a wonderful family guide available, complete with a miniature cartoon Ginsberg. It’s wonderful in its whimsy, but the guide seems most accessible (in terms of being physically obtainable for visitors) only when having worked through two-thirds of the exhibition. For many, by the time they find this brilliant little trail, they are almost at the end of the entire exhibit already – another disappointing oversight.
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There has been plenty of reason to grumble about the National Museum Wales of late, certainly if you are an archaeologist. One of the things that I have found most troubling about the closure of the archaeology gallery, is that a major part of the Welsh story will be lost to audiences in the city centre. A museum stacked with international art collections is not a National Museum, it is a National Gallery - an institution which serves a very different purpose. That being said, a National Gallery which explores Welsh themes would be no bad addition to the Welsh landscape, and is a concept which frequently generates excitement in Senedd debates (coming up once a year or so). When the contemporary art gallery opened in the National Museum Wales, it did so with a notion that this space would allow the museum to explore Welsh artists and Welsh works of art. In the early days, this was achieved quite effectively. However subsequent exhibitions have includes 'The Queen: Art and Image', 'Pop and Abstract' and of course the Artes Mundi prize displays - all of which were highly questionable in terms of their relevance to an exploration of Welsh themes, certainly Welsh artists were ephemeral contributors at best to such displays. Officially launching tomorrow though, is the 'Wales Visitation: Poetry, Romanticism and Myth in Art'. It is, I would argue, the first National Museum Wales exhibition to be inspired by the use of LSD, it taking its inspiration from Allen Ginsberg's 1967 wanderings through the Welsh landscape. I'm looking forward to getting down to the museum next week, but I've heard bits and pieces about the collection, which will include the likes of 'The Bard', and a Mari Lwyd. I'm hoping for something wonderfully bizarre, but first and foremost I'm hoping for something Welsh. Early indications suggest that this exhibition will do just that, and my hope is that this becomes the norm, rather than the special. You will find lots of voices who will, unofficially of course, state their concerns about the changes taking place in Cardiff - but unless there is change at directorate level, a 'museum of art' is exactly what Cardiff will become. If that is to be the case, it is of increased importance that such themes and concepts are explored in the National Galleries - Welsh archaeology is about to be jettisoned from the National story, were the same to be said of Welsh narratives generally, it would be a great shame indeed. Such ideas may seem OTT, but the National Museum I walk through today, seems to have less and less to do with Wales with each passing year. So, here's hoping for good and freaky, but above all, Welsh things with 'Wales Visitation', and an emphasis on such themes for the future. Wales Visitation: Allen Ginsberg
White fog lifting & falling on mountain-brow Trees moving in rivers of wind The clouds arise as on a wave, gigantic eddy lifting mist above teeming ferns exquisitely swayed along a green crag glimpsed thru mullioned glass in valley raine— Bardic, O Self, Visitacione, tell naught but what seen by one man in a vale in Albion, of the folk, whose physical sciences end in Ecology, the wisdom of earthly relations, of mouths & eyes interknit ten centuries visible orchards of mind language manifest human, of the satanic thistle that raises its horned symmetry flowering above sister grass-daisies’ pink tiny bloomlets angelic as lightbulbs— Remember 160 miles from London’s symmetrical thorned tower & network of TV pictures flashing bearded your Self the lambs on the tree-nooked hillside this day bleating heard in Blake’s old ear, & the silent thought of Wordsworth in eld Stillness clouds passing through skeleton arches of Tintern Abbey— Bard Nameless as the Vast, babble to Vastness! All the Valley quivered, one extended motion, wind undulating on mossy hills a giant wash that sank white fog delicately down red runnels on the mountainside whose leaf-branch tendrils moved asway in granitic undertow down— and lifted the floating Nebulous upward, and lifted the arms of the trees and lifted the grasses an instant in balance and lifted the lambs to hold still and lifted the green of the hill, in one solemn wave A solid mass of Heaven, mist-infused, ebbs thru the vale, a wavelet of Immensity, lapping gigantic through Llanthony Valley, the length of all England, valley upon valley under Heaven’s ocean tonned with cloud-hang, —Heaven balanced on a grassblade. Roar of the mountain wind slow, sigh of the body, One Being on the mountainside stirring gently Exquisite scales trembling everywhere in balance, one motion thru the cloudy sky-floor shifting on the million feet of daisies, one Majesty the motion that stirred wet grass quivering to the farthest tendril of white fog poured down through shivering flowers on the mountain’s head— No imperfection in the budded mountain, Valleys breathe, heaven and earth move together, daisies push inches of yellow air, vegetables tremble, grass shimmers green sheep speckle the mountainside, revolving their jaws with empty eyes, horses dance in the warm rain, tree-lined canals network live farmland, blueberries fringe stone walls on hawthorn’d hills, pheasants croak on meadows haired with fern— Out, out on the hillside, into the ocean sound, into delicate gusts of wet air, Fall on the ground, O great Wetness, O Mother, No harm on your body! Stare close, no imperfection in the grass, each flower Buddha-eye, repeating the story, myriad-formed— Kneel before the foxglove raising green buds, mauve bells dropped doubled down the stem trembling antennae, & look in the eyes of the branded lambs that stare breathing stockstill under dripping hawthorn— I lay down mixing my beard with the wet hair of the mountainside, smelling the brown vagina-moist ground, harmless, tasting the violet thistle-hair, sweetness— One being so balanced, so vast, that its softest breath moves every floweret in the stillness on the valley floor, trembles lamb-hair hung gossamer rain-beaded in the grass, lifts trees on their roots, birds in the great draught hiding their strength in the rain, bearing same weight, Groan thru breast and neck, a great Oh! to earth heart Calling our Presence together The great secret is no secret Senses fit the winds, Visible is visible, rain-mist curtains wave through the bearded vale, gray atoms wet the wind’s kabbala Crosslegged on a rock in dusk rain, rubber booted in soft grass, mind moveless, breath trembles in white daisies by the roadside, Heaven breath and my own symmetric Airs wavering thru antlered green fern drawn in my navel, same breath as breathes thru Capel-Y-Ffn, Sounds of Aleph and Aum through forests of gristle, my skull and Lord Hereford’s Knob equal, All Albion one. What did I notice? Particulars! The vision of the great One is myriad— smoke curls upward from ashtray, house fire burned low, The night, still wet & moody black heaven starless upward in motion with wet wind. |
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