I was so pleased to catch the last day of this exhibition, held at the dilapidated and beautiful Customs & Immigration Building on Bute Street.
' Paradise Lost unites established and emerging artists in one of Cardiff's most iconic disused buildings. Painting, video, installation, sculpture, photography and live performance respond to the unique setting'...'in a fully immersive art experience organised by the great tactileBOSCH collective in celebration of the memory of Kim Fielding.'
The building itself offers an atmospheric backdrop to some very creepy and creative installations. Artists' names and the titles of exhibits weren't always obvious or were missing, so it's hard to credit individuals. One of the curators said that the organisers thought that the overall title, 'Paradise Lost,' was enough. They didn't want to be prescriptive and to let the viewer bring their own imagination and thinking to the piece. It was a helpful starting point, but some of the installations needed more to guide my imagination. My friend said that the problem for the untrained in conceptual art is to assess what's really good and what is not. As we struggled to understand what the artist was trying to say, I found myself leaning back on my emotional responses to the pieces, which are of course also important. I found myself appreciating pieces, such as the giant woodcut prints that involved traditional skills and were beautifully crafted. I found myself really wanting to be fair and not dismiss a piece because I couldn't make intellectual sense of it, but installations that seemed like a random collection of objects without guidance, didn't help me take the artist seriously, and for me that's a real missed opportunity for both of us.
Having said all that I did enjoy the exhibition it was stimulating, I am still left wondering about some of the exhibits, and the images are still floating about my mind and senses, such as the chimney sweep brushes, blue umbrellas, and newspaper clippings of teaching vacancies in one exhibit, the pit pony, stamping on a copy of Private Eye's front page with a photo of Arthur Scargill with a loud speaker, and a bible with moral questions inserted, such as,''Would you kill Hitler's mother?' I suppose you would need to know Kim Fielding well to understand the significance of a pile of wooden parquet blocks juxtaposed with two pint glasses and a cocktail glass balanced on the wall. I can only guess.
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