Artist Talk – Round Studio, Friday 26th of September, 6pm
You are warmly invited to join us, and artist and writer Tom Cardew for his presentation that will explore work-in-progress as a result of our international residency exchange programme MAGNETIC that fosters cultural exchange between Brittany and Wales.
Tom will present a film and project exploring Breton myth, language, and system collapse, where Ankou, the harbinger of death, wanders through wind farms and megaliths, gathering what remains of story, belief, and kinship –Death in the Age of Plenty is a new film and exhibition in development, exploring contemporary system collapse through the prism of ancient myth. Told through the Celtic harbinger of death, Yr Angau, the work imagines a speculative loop between forgotten pasts and possible futures, where Welsh and Breton resurface as signals of endurance. In this world, wind turbines and megaliths act as containers for superstition, memory, and disquiet. Yr Angau, a kind of contemporary Don Quixote, moves through these landscapes not to harvest souls, but to gather what remains of story, belief, and kinship.
“This presentation will share work-in-progress from the current research and development phase: script fragments, visual studies, and early film material developed on location in Wales and Brittany, with in-kind support from the Maison des Mégalithes, Carnac. I will also discuss the wider vision for the exhibition, combining moving-image, sculptural elements, and works on paper, and how the project addresses shared concerns around language loss, environmental collapse, and the persistence of myth.
The event will include a screening of my previous film Machynys Forgets Itself alongside a presentation of this new Welsh-Breton project in development.”
This event is free and not ticketed.
The Magnetic residency is part of our programme of 8-week international residencies MAGNETIC – a joint Franco-British initiative launched in 2022 under the umbrella of Fluxus Art Projects. The programme is based on 4 tandem partnerships between a French region and a British nation, and we are very pleased that Wales, Aberystwyth Centre is partnered with Brittany, Frac Bretagne in Rennes.
(Image: Film still of the Carnac Alignment, Brittany credit: Tom Cardew)
