Inside world’s biggest visual arts event

Mar 14 2008 by Karen Price, Western Mail

Wales' major visual arts show returns this weekend. Karen Price and artist Michael Cousin preview the Artes Mundi 3 show

INSIDE one of the vast galleries at National Museum Cardiff, Indian artist N S Harsha is varnishing his floor painting. He arrived in Wales just days ago and he immediately started work on his new piece.

It is an integral part of the Artes Mundi 3 exhibition which was officially opened at the museum last night .

Harsha is one of eight international artists (including two artists working as a duo) shortlisted for the £40,000 biennial prize which was launched in Wales in 2004.

In the run-up to the official opening, the artists along with gallery staff were working around the clock to get the exhibits ready.

For as well as impressing the judges – who will not be making their final decision until the prize is awarded on April 24 – they will also be showcasing their work to thousands of visitors from now until June.

Hours before the official opening, I visited the gallery along with Cardiff-based film-maker and artist Michael Cousin.

As you walk through the main doors into the Artes Mundi space on the first floor you are introduced to the work of Kabul film-maker Lida Abdul.

The 34-year-old, who has worked at gunpoint in the past, uses video and performance to comprehend the disaster that devastated her home country for more than two decades.

Her three films are all extremely powerful and poignant pieces. You are immediately drawn in, particularly when it comes to the second film, which shows young boys selling crumbling bricks in order to get the money they need for their families.

“She has a natural approach to her work,” says Cousin. “There’s a lot of hand-held camera work which makes it more intimate.

“All the films are concerned with the survival instinct. It’s a very powerful way to start the exhibition.”

From the dark room you immediately step into a light area which is filled with Harsha’s large-scale brightly-coloured acrylics.

Harsha is a storyteller and his first piece, Mass Marriage, at first seems a gentle and amusing narrative on Indian marriage around the world, but on closer inspection, it also reveals loss, sadness and the complex nature of human relationships.

“Although I didn’t know the meaning behind the piece, I knew what it was about when I looked at it,” says Cousin, who last year won a major Creative Wales Award for his work. “It’s a very simplistic painting but I like it.”

Harsha has also produced a piece of work consisting of six large boards onto which are painted different figures sitting on plastic chairs. There are dark smoke signals daubed on each board.

“The people he is depicting have all come to make a speech,” says Cousin. “They all have something to say. It’s a very interesting idea and you are kind of surprised it has as much depth.

“Because I come from a film-making background I often find it difficult to engage with painting but this is very easy to engage with.”

The next display belongs to Abdoulaye Konate, who is from Mali. He is putting the finishing touches to one of his new pieces.

The textile artist is deeply involved in the everyday life of his society and his large-scale pieces use natural materials – from wood and sand to quills and even cars – from Mali’s heritage.

We are ushered into another dark room where there are 12 television sets as well as two large screens. They are showing films by Australian Susan Norrie about the aftermath of a mud volcano which has wreaked havoc on East Java in Indonesia.

Cousin says, “The multiple TV screens show it’s a complex situation. They bombard you with these images and it’s too much to take in. The images have been played around with slightly so that the landscape becomes a universal grey, although some colours are picked out.”

Scottish duo Dalziel and Scullion are concerned with our environment and natural landscape, particularly the complex relationship between humankind and the natural world.

One of their pieces is a striking panoramic photograph featuring a moth hovering near the ocean.

“There’s no hierarchy in nature in their work. We (humans) don’t have any more status than anyone else. It’s a very powerful piece.”

One of Romanian artist Mircea Cantor’s pieces is a film showing a wolf and a deer circling each other in a gallery space.

“Like the Dalziel and Scullion work there is a narrative of relationships within nature,” says Cousin.

“With this piece it is the tension of predator and prey, you expect violence, death and blood, but there is an uneasy truce.”

The final two nominees – Portuguese artist Vasco Araujo, who uses performance, photography, video and sculpture to investigate different aspects of the human condition, and Rosangela Renno from Rio de Janeiro – were still putting the finishing touches to their exhibits.

Cousin, one of the artists commissioned by Safle for the St David’s 2 public art work in Cardiff, believes Artes Mundi 3 is a complex show dealing with survival tactics in response to a wide variety of threats, both global and personal.

He says, “When the work is at its best it transcends the specificity of cultures, of history, of politics.

“It shows us in a very moving way humanity and nature under threat and responding to that threat in a unique manner.

“Like the rare moth in the landscape by Dalziel and Scullion, we cannot comprehend the entire multitude of dangers to existence that lie in the very fabric of what is around us.

“All we can do is respond when we become aware, we adapt and survive or stand still and await the end.

“In the film Brick Sellers of Kabul by Lida Abdul I think we are forced to think about our own will to survive, what we are willing to hold on to and what we are willing to let go of in order to continue our existence.

“Do any of us deserve to survive the coming storm, however it appears to us?”

Artes Mundi 3 is at National Museum Cardiff from tomorrow to June 8. The winner of the £40,000 prize will be announced on April 24

For full details, visit www.artesmundi.org