Catrin Saran James

A typical ALARM! cover / Ian Bone and Ray Jones – 29th June 2017

Back in Spring 2017 I was asked to research, interview and create an oral history archive of Swansea’s anarchistic underground and counter culture from the late 1960s to the early 1980s for the Trouble Makers Festival held in and around High Street Swansea on 13-16 July 2017.

Working with Swansea Museum, we went to London to interview the notorious Ian Bone at his home. Ian Bone was the editor of ALARM! magazine, the anarchist underground newspaper that was published in Swansea throughout the 1970s which amongst other astonishing things brought Swansea to its knees and exposed corruption within its local council. Read all about it in his book ‘Bash The Rich: True Life Confessions of an Anarchist in the UK’. It’s a fantastic read.

                                           Ian Bone in 1968.  Riots on Mumbles Road

Through collecting objects and ephemera linked to ALARM! and then getting our hands on an immaculate complete set of ALARM! magazines (which is an education in itself, a complete set of ALARM!’s are held at West Glamorgan Archives) from a local man, this lead to an exhibition at Galerie Simpson where the opening night was graced by the good the bad and the punk of the local anarchist trouble making scene of the last 50 years.

As well as interviewing Ian Bone and provocateur and raconteur Ray Jones, I was fortunate to capture the story of Rose Davies who shares her involvement in Swansea’s political and class climate in the 1970s which includes attending the Women’s Liberation Group as a teenager and then setting up a women and family refuge in the Sketty area of Swansea in the early 1970’s.

Rose Davies at her home in May 2017. She is holding up the photograph of her protesting about women’s rights & housing homeless families outside Swansea Council’s Housing Department in the early 1970s. The book is the infamous ‘Bash The Rich: True Life Confessions of an Anarchist in the UK’ by Ian Bone.

I then met with Melvyn Williams who recalls his teenage years as an activist in Swansea in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The oral history includes getting involved with an underground publication and its printing, Alarm! magazine and the political climate of 1970s & 1980s Swansea & beyond.

I’ll write a bit more detail soon. I’ve not had time to write recently.

The links to the oral histories are above in the Soundcloud page.

Enjoy, be astonished and laugh, some of the stories are some of the funniest things I’ve ever heard.

https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/local-news/man-once-described-most-dangerous-13185785

Since April 2016 I’ve been building a digital archive for The Heritage of Orchards and Cider Making in Wales project, a 2-year project funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund, and run by the Welsh Perry & Cider Society and The George Ewart Evans Centre for Storytelling at The University of south Wales.

By travelling the length and width of Wales, I’ve collected and edited oral histories and digital stories, through interviews recorded with cider and perry producers, community orchard groups, heritage organisations and individuals involved in orcharding and producing the very Welsh produce called cider and perry. Within this period I delivered many digital story workshops & Pop Up Story shops for community orchard groups at traditional folk events like Wassails all over Wales. In April 2017 I presented a paper on my work on the project at The Storytelling and Place Symposium held at The University of south Wales, Atrium.

I’m currently putting the final touches together for a touring mobile exhibition that will interpret the project as a whole. The exhibition will visit venues from May 2018 starting at The National Waterfront Museum Swansea and taking in National Trust properties at Erddig Hall, Wrexham & Dyffryn Gardens in the Vale of Glamorgan, The Welsh Perry and Cider Festival 2018 at Caldicot Castle , The National Eisteddfod Genedlaethol 2018 in Cardiff & Hereford Cider Museum.

Find the digital story collection in the link below:
The Heritage of Orchards & Cider Making in Wales project

The collection will be in available in mid 2018 as a public resource via its own website, The People’s Collection Wales and St Fagans National History Museum.

Find out more about the project here:

https://www.welshcider.co.uk/heritage

http://storytelling.research.southwales.ac.uk/heritagecider/

​Find us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/communityorchardswales

Follow us on Instagram: www.instagram.com/orchardswales

Follow us on Twitter @OrchardWales

Below are some snaps I took on my journeys.

Guerrilla Restoration meets ABMU Health Board

It was fantastic to have had an email from the ABMU Health Board earlier this year.
Martin Thomas who leads the ABMU Heritage Team contacted me as he was researching what public art the health board owned.

Martin came across my Guerrilla Restoration work and the previous work I’d done in highlighting cleaning samples of Harry Everington’s 1969 abstract concrete sculptural mural over the last 5 years.

Harry Everington

“I am delighted to be here to see this – the minute I saw this mural I thought of my dad. He was passionate about his work and he would have been very pleased to see this being restored to its former glory, I think this is a brilliant idea,”  said Judith, who had travelled from her home in Birmingham accompanied by her partner Kevin Reilly.

http://www.walesonline.co.uk/whats-on/arts-culture-news/neglected-swansea-work-art-cleaned-12925793

http://www.wales.nhs.uk/sitesplus/863/news/44823

I am very happy to announce that we have managed to get Owen Hatherley, a big inspiration behind Austerity Nostalgia to come to Swansea for a talk and discussion at Galerie Simpson on Sunday 15th January.

I’ve been reading his work on architecture, social commentary and the past for a few years whether it be his books like The Guide to the New Ruins of Great Britain and the more recent The Ministry of Nostalgia or his Guardian articles.

I just think he’s bang on the money.
It’s an exciting thing that he is coming to Swansea as part of the exhibition.

A light brunch will be served in true wonderful Galerie Simpson style.

Owen Hatherley

Sunday 15th January
12pm-2pm

Galerie Simpson
222 High Street
Swansea

Free

All welcome.

https://www.theguardian.com/profile/owen-hatherley

https://www.dezeen.com/tag/owen-hatherley/

https://www.radicalphilosophy.com/commentary/lash-out-and-cover-up

The Austerity Nostalgia exhibition I’ve curated at Galerie Simpson, Swansea is on until the 20th January 2017.
Catch us if you can x

Save the date!

We have a group exhibition opening on Saturday 5th November at the ever supportive Galerie Simpson, Swansea.
4pm-7pm – All welcome.

At the beginning of 2016 I was very fortunate to be asked by the gallery to curate a group exhibition.  I instantly knew the topic and who I wanted involved.
The themes of Austerity & Nostalgia in all it’s guises run through the work they’ve created for the show.

Here’s the official press release:

Galerie Simpson is delighted to present ‘Austerity Nostalgia’ –  a  show of our time,  curated by Catrin Saran James.  Our second exhibition with Catrin, this promises to be a real catalyst for thought, discussion and debate.  Austerity Nostalgia has recently become a cultural and artistic obsession and Catrin looks to explore artistic response to this current trend for sampling public modernism. She says of the ideas behind the show,

 ‘‘I’m interested in how the recent past is re-interpreted. With my Archivist hat on, it’s something that’s on my mind a lot. This covers social history, politics, fashion, domesticity, design, music etc. I’m looking at the time between the 1930s to the 1980s. These decades are continually being rediscovered and possibly mis-interpreted to reflect a false authenticity. This could possible change future generations perspective of what was the recent past. You see it already with sanitised versions or rose tinted spectacles of what it was like to live in WW2 with the term ‘Blitz Spirit’ being over used, a new festishisation of Brutalist architecture and the like and possibly looking back to even the Miner’s Strike in the early 1980s with films like Pride. Austerity Nostalgia is a question more than a statement, a subject I’d like to talk to others about and does it really matter?’

As in her solo project at Galerie Simpson, this show is set to ask as many questions as to give answers.   She cites  – ‘Are those sampling their way through eras and cultural movements ripping it up and putting it back together in a tasteless manner?   And if so, is this because they are simply taking visual nods from popular culture to create a morphed past of cross-culture mulch? By doing so are they ultimately giving young people who are interested in scratching the surface in mid 20th century history the wrong information? Are we devaluing our cultural and social history?’ 

Above – Mark James

Hope to see you at some point over the duration of the show.

The Galerie Simpson Selection Box is a very special limited edition fundraising portfolio project.
Managed by Jane Simpson, Jane has spent the last 6 months working very hard bringing together 18 artists to create brand new pieces of art especially for this unique box of tricks. Each box is hand varnished, laser cut and houses all 18 pieces of art.
Artists include Peter Blake, Jamie Reid, Gavin Turk, Gary Hume, Rachel Whiteread, Simon Periton amongst many others!

Mid varnish workshop

Limited to 50 Selection Boxes the 18 artists include  many of my heroes.

I’ve been very fortunate to be selected to create a silk screen and digital printed piece for the Selection Box.

Gavin Turk – ‘G.T’ Biscuit 2016

‘Tuck Shop’ – Silk screen and digital print on Somerset satin. 2016

This gold plated leaf by Simon Periton is stunning and is placed on a red velvet bed in the Selection Box. A delicate feast to the eyes.

Above is the Peter Blake print that is included in the Selection Box and a beauty it is too.

More details to follow to how to purchase this unique work of art.

Galerie Simpson is part of The Arts Council of Wales, Collector Plan.

We have a party at Galerie Simpson on Friday 22nd April to launch the Selection Box and there will be a London launch later this Spring.

I spent the whole of February working at Hackney Archives. This local authority Archive contains all documents relating to the borough of Hackney. Based at Dalston Junction, I rode the number 56 bus everyday to work on the historic photographic collection held by the archive. My role was to clean up and restructure the metadata held by the archive collection system. The photographs will then be taken to the Digital Preservation company Max Communications who specialise in digitising large archival photographic collections.
Once the photographs are digitised Hackney Archives are able to give digital access to the thousands of fascinating images that they currently hold from the 18th to 21st centuries. It was great to have the opportunity to be a part of the process to make this happen.

I worked with a small team of Archivists who were absolutely wonderful and made my short time working with them very memorable and welcoming. It’s a fascinating archive with community firmly at its heart. I witnessed several community and outreach projects while I was there, with visitors using documents to delve deeper into their own personal social history.
I felt like a bit of an expert on the area even after the first week. As I travelled back and fore to work I saw the areas from the photographs on my route and I began to have an affinity with Hackney, its people, its businesses and industry. I was also very interested to learn about the many social housing projects that sprung up from the 1930s to the 1970s in the borough and I was fortunate to work with many photographs from the 1950s that covered these new urban living spaces.
It was great to be back working at a local authority archive again and I felt privileged to work with such a unique collection of photographs that will have a new lease of life in the digital world once the project is completed.

It’s The Clash at Victoria Park in 1978!

Images copyright of Hackney Archives, Hackney Borough Council.

A piece I wrote for an interpretation panel to be displayed next to the images which are now on display at The Taliesin Arts Centre, Swansea.

The destruction of Swansea in the Second World War left the town centre with the largest bombsite in Wales. Its reconstruction gave opportunity for young architects to refine a style of modern architecture. Due to the restriction of materials the post-war programme of building a new town centre was based on priorities and budget.
A development plan for Swansea was born.

Town planning advanced in the war and Oxford Street and The Kingsway are two large areas of Swansea’s town centre that were redesigned during the 1950s post-war reconstruction process.

This exhibition of photographs from the 1950s and 1960s are exclusively from Swansea Museum’s collection and have never before been on public display. Swansea artist Catrin James has curated these images and they will play a part in a larger collaborative exhibition of Post War Swansea between Catrin, Swansea Museum and The Taliesin Arts Theatre in the near future.

Swansea city centre is changing again. This exhibition is about reflecting on the square mile of land in Swansea’s city centre where groups of modernist buildings have now stood for over half a century.
It is about considering the materials used, the use of space. It is also about the beautiful design features such as shopfront lettering and coloured tiles as much as the rethinking of new principles in town planning. It is about celebrating Swansea’s post war legacy.

With many thanks to Swansea Museum and The Taliesin Arts Centre.

On Tuesday the 19th January, Taliesin Arts Theatre & the BFI have collaborated for an evening of film called Britain on Film: MY TOWN 
I’m really looking forward to both films shown on the evening. It’s great that this kind of event is happening. It ticks all my boxes.

http://filmhubwales.org/made-my-town-made-swansea

To coincide with this I’ve been asked by Taliesin Arts Centre to curate a small exhibition of photographs from Swansea Museum’s archive to be displayed in main foyer / cafe area of the theatre. I was over the moon to take this opportunity as the evening of film is based on the rebuilding of Swansea after the war, my favourite period in design and architecture.
I am fortunate enough to be able to hand pick images of the town’s post war period from Swansea Museum’s photographic archive for the exhibition. They are fantastic photographs, depicting Swansea’s brand new town centre after a treacherous and austere decade. Mid century modern heaven comes to south Wales.
These images have never been on display before which is exciting enough. Just having access to this archive is gold for me, to choose images for display is a big privilege as Swansea Museum is one of my favourite places in the world.

Here is a crop of one of the many images that will be on display at Taliesin Arts Centre from 13th- 30th January 2015.

I love the lady in the head scarf on the top deck of the bus. I wonder where her stop is?

Image Swansea Museum collection / Amgueddfa Abertawe

Thank you to Sybil Crouch at Taliesin and Swansea Museum for all their help so far.