By Catherine Stephens-Ward, Artes Mundi Live Guide
When you visit Artes Mundi the first work you see is Fernando Bryce’s work ‘Die Welt’. 195 black and white images, in small picture frames which fill three gallery walls. At first you would be mistaken for thinking that they are newspapers, but when you look more closely it is clear that these are ink drawings made by hand. Fernando has painstakingly copied newspaper pages, propaganda posters, adverts and maps and created a reproduction of the original. This process of looking, reading and recording is very labour intensive and to have amassed this collection of drawings must have taken a long time.
I spoke to a lady in the gallery today who could relate to Fernando’s work the most because she could appreciate the amount of time that went into it. By comparison the other 6 artists in the show are exhibiting films. Is film-making quicker? Should we merit an artist’s work by the amount of time spent on it? And how can we measure time? The apparent absence of the artist’s hand should not influence how we judge a piece of art, the role of artist has after all been re-defined over time.
I was surprised to discover that Chen Chieh-Jen who has two 30 minute films in the show makes on average only one film a year. This says a lot! The extensive credits at the end of Adrian Pacci’s film ‘Per Speculum’ suggest that the film-making process is a complex one. In this film, Adrian plays the role of artist, producer and editor. We should not assume therefore that film-art is ‘easy’ or involves less artistic skill. I overheard someone in the gallery say that they could easily have made one of the films in Artes Mundi. I wanted to say ‘no you couldn’t’ but I didn’t.
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