Dreaming Awake
Terezin catalogue cover.
Dreaming Awake
Exhibition of Eight Artists from Wales in the Czech Republic
August 2001 - April 2002
Josef Janda, Keith Bayliss and Dada Stepankova at the opening
in Terezin.
Once I read a wise sentence: "Arts has no bounds".
I don't remember who the author was, but it's not important. It
is the very true meaning of the sentence that matters. Let me
disclose the origins of "Dreaming Awake" with a short
personal confession.
One day in September 1995, I happened to be on a coach going to
Wales from London. I had been invited to present my poetry in
" The Visual Art " An Exhibition of Responses, which
was held in Cardiff and Swansea as part of the U.K. Festival of
Literature. My involvement in the project had been arranged by
Johannes W. Glaw, a German artist, and a mutual friend of mine
and the Welsh artists. To me it seemed like a journey to an unknown
land. I had never been in Wales before and I didn't know anybody
there in person. Well, I had read a Czech translation of works
by the famous poet Dylan Thomas, but to tell the truth that was
almost everything I knew about modern Welsh culture at that time.
I arrived in Swansea in the afternoon. I was awaited, so my doubts
faded away instantly. On the same day in the evening I was acquainted
with some of the local artists and literati in the cordial atmosphere
of the Westbourne Hotel Pub. We had seen each other for the first
time in our lives, but when parting I had the feeling that I happened
to be among old friends. I could stay in Wales for a week only,
but I shall always have fond memories of this experience. I was
impressed by the romantic coast of the Gower Peninsula as well
as by the people I met. When I was leaving, we promised we would
endeavour to promote mutual recognition of Czech and Welsh contemporary
art.
The work of Roger Moss, sculptor and Iwan Bala.
In the several years that passed since then, we
already accomplished two projects. An exhibition of graphic works
by Keith Bayliss and William Brown at Vyšehrad Gallery in
Prague in October 1996, and a major retrospective exhibition of
Czech and Slovak surrealism in Swansea in 1998. Thus "The
Dreaming Awake" exhibition of eight artists from Wales, currently
taking place in the Czech Republic, is the third project undertaken
together. It started its tour in the Small Fortress exhibition
gallery in Terezín National Monument. From the beginning
of November till the end of February it is to be housed in Museum
Gallery in Horice, a submontane town in East Bohemia. In March
the exhibition will be moved to "Práchenské"
Regional Museum in Písek, a historic town in South Bohemia,
and in April, it will reach its final venue "Ceasar Gallery"
in the centre of Olomouc in North Moravia, a city rich in history
and culture. So what once originated as an idea, has gradually
changed into a reality and into a dialogue lead by artists who
feel the urge to meet and share inspiration. Despite the geographic
distance between our countries, that spans over half of Europe,
we feel close and related.
The poet David Greenslade wrote in the catalogue for the exhibition:
" The oneiric option, however,(a way made known to us by
Gaston Bachelard) has mythic, organic and material valves that
(impossible by daytime's judgement) remain open and closed at
the time, welcoming rich, warm blooded, often contradictory flows
of thought, sensuality, intuition and feeling. The walking dream,
or dreaming while awake, is a flood of lush, difficult, paradoxical
activity in the midst of choking plexus of glossy, solar algorithmic
double-talk. Sleep and dreams of night are known to the waking
mind only via memory. Dreaming awake, however, increases attentive
care just where particular, oneiric influx starts to charm and
loosen familiar constraints. The work here is therefore not somnambulist;
it is alert liberating and generous to imaginal intruders who
- also vigilantly cunning-outwit surveillance and boundary procedures,
determined to cross towards the artist's hand."
There is no logical transition between dreaming and being awake,
and artists have been making most of this fact since long ago.
Jan Švankmajer, a famous Czech film director and surrealist,
says: "There is a sole simple physical act between dream
and reality, the lifting and closing of the eye lids. In case
of day dreaming even that does not occur."
The exhibiting artists are linked neither by a particular artistic
programme, nor by ideological views. As it is, they belong to
a generation of middle-aged men and they all have established
themselves within the context of contemporary Welsh art. Their
home is Wales, a country where one can find not only old Celtic
monuments, but where the echoes of ancient traditions and customs
are still reflected in the present-day life of modern society.
Perhaps these unconscious undercurrents are the very thing that
has endowed the artists, whatever diverse in expression, with
a certain kind of related vision of the world. At least, it appears
that way to my Central European soul. Almost all works presented
in the "Dreaming Awake" can be labelled as imaginative.
As such can be regarded works that hold both latent contents of
dreams as well as fragments of reality. Viewers can decipher the
hidden contents of a piece of imaginative arts only through associations
and analogies of their own, which are an indispensable part of
their individual mental equipment. Only thus, successful communication
between the artist and the percipient can happen.
Iwan Bala, an artist and writer, projects into his polemic symbolic
works of art not only the present time, but also by history the
suppressed desires of past generations. Keith Bayliss's canvases
draw from the world of ancient times. A strange cold stiffness
and an expressive conception add to them a tinge of fatefulness.
Animals are frequent motifs of works by William Brown, a Canadian
settled in Wales. Earlier in his career, he became acquainted
with the ancestral arts of Native Americans and the Inuits. Animals,
in accordance with the traditions of these indigenous peoples,
are not mere living objects, but are messengers from the Universe
that convey the secrets of Nature to the heart of Man. Tony Goble's
bright colours lighten his images of fairy-tale world with fresh
spirit of joy. On the contrary, the strange gloomy urgency of
Clive Hicks-Jenkins's lyrical canvases evoke disturbance. What
spreads out from three dimensional objects and sculptures by Roger
Moss is their inner peace. As if in them, basic natural forces
and a creative potential of human unconsciousness had met. The
author of portraits of individual artists is Bernard Mitchell.
His photographs are sensitive probes that capture the artists
in their own environment. They disclose the mysterious alchemy
that accompanies each genuine process of art-making. A mutual
friend of all the involved artists is the Czech glassmaker Jaroslav
Mykisa, a native of Olomouc in Moravia, who has been working in
Wales for more than twenty years. He has settled in Swansea, where
he has his studio, he also designs, restores and teaches architectural
glass.
Mirror glass and wood sculpture by Jaroslav Mykisa of Swansea.
At the time of finishing these lines, the "Dreaming Awake"
Exhibition is slowly proceeding midway its tour of the Czech Republic.
According to the responses so far, it can be already stated that
its mission has been successful. It demonstrates that the current
unification of Europe is more than a pure boring economic and
political business. The whole process may have many forms. Learning
about spiritual affinity is one of them. Visual art, the language
without words, is proving to be excellent medium for this kind
of communication.
November 2001 / Josef Janda
Dreaming Awake exhibits
the use of narrative in art displayed through the work of seven
artists living and working in Wales.
Dream, myth, hope, desire,
history and memory make themselves evident in a highly personal,
sometimes humorous, often colourful, but always serious way.
The exhibition contains paintings,
graphic works, sculpture and glass works.
The exhibition was curated
by artist Keith Bayliss and was first exhibited at Llantarnam
Grange Arts Centre in 1999.
It will tour the Czech Republic
from August 2001. Starting its tour at Pamatka Terezin, touring
three further venues over a minimum six month period.
Dreaming Awake - Seven
Visionary Artists:
Keith bayliss
Williams Brown
Iwan Bala
Roger Moss
Anthony Goble
Clive Hicks-Jenkins
Jaroslav Mykisa
The exhibition contains
photographs of the artists by Bernard Mitchell
