By Katherine Bujalska, Artes Mundi Live Guide
Last week I was given a recommendation to go and have a look in the Art in Wales Galleries, just off Gallery 1 on the 1st floor of the Museum, and particularly at the painting of Philip Proger. It is by an unknown artist (perhaps the Italian School) and was painted sometime during the beginning of the 17th Century. The wall plaque states that it is the earliest known portrait of a Welshman holding a leek and James I (whose court Philip Proger served at) commented that 'the wearing of leeks by Welshmen was a good and commendable fashion'!
The next time you come to the Museum, do make a special visit to see this painting, it's worth it and I can't pretend I didn't leave the gallery with a chuckle on my lips!
I walked from here through to the film installation by Bulgarian artist Ergin Çavuşoğlu, 'Voyage of No Return'. In this piece, a father and son discuss what is is to depart from the familiar, in order to see places unknown. Ergin filmed this piece in Oban, a small port town off the east coast of Scotland, a place he felt was symbolic as a place of departure.
Within the dialogue, despite the son saying that when he arrives at the place he intends to go, he will get a suit made as "I hear they make plenty of good suits over there", neither son nor father make any verbal reference to locatable places, throughout their conversation. They speak of the mythical leader of the Scythians in Ancient Greece, of places Marco Polo may have seen and of a beautifully and accurately described city in a dream, but of no places we could find on a map. So their conversation remains one of ideas and the abstract, lying outside of the realm of experience.
But if you look closely, you may spot symbols that Ergin has slipped in, just like unknown painter of Philip Proger did, of places pretty close to home. There's a Scottish flag stitched into the hat of a man waving farewell on the dock, there are English lions on the sterns of ships coming into port, and of course there are the leeks lying in the bicycle basket being pushed around by one of the films' protagonists. There are probably more.
What initially seemed to me one of the toughest pieces in Artes Mundi 4 to get to grips with, has become one of the most rewarding. The abstract nature of some of the dialogue may, at first, seem too much of a challange but I urge everyone to stick with it for it is worth the effort.
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