GALLERIES I AND II
10 JUNE - 22 JULY 2006

Fluellen: Captain MacMorris, I think, look you, under your correction, there is not many of your nation -
MacMorris: Of my nation! What is my nation? Is a villain, and a bastard, and a knave, and a rascal.
What is my nation? Who talks of my nation?
Shakespeare, HENRY V - ACT III SCENE I
Captain Fluellen and Captain MacMorris - the captains of King Henry's troops from Wales and Ireland.Seamus Harahan and Bedwyr Williams share a non-parochial sense of nationhood demonstrated through an interest in social idiosyncrasies brought to attention by the observation of peculiar and unexceptional everyday incidents. It is also clear to see differences in the artists positions and practices. Harahan's covert filming shows real empathy and restraint as the artist also remains objective, compared to Williams' overt performances and installations, where he uses humour to describe, sometimes mockingly, his observations - everything that crosses path is met with a black sense of humour.
Seamus Harahan and Bedwyr Williams were chosen in 2005 to represent their countries on National Pavilions at the 51st Venice Biennale, 'something inconceivable just a decade ago' . Wales and Northern Ireland, much like Scotland, have a turbulent history of English dominance suffering political oppression, economic exploitation and raw prejudice. This coupled with an antipathy towards Celtic aspects of British culture, including language and traditional music, has increased perceived boundaries within Britain. Both Biennale presentations were informed by a desire to open up 'national' representation to multiple perspectives, but often the more apparently global we become the more insular we get – ‘drawing new boundaries, territories, margins, oppositions, we try to fix, dig ourselves in, make rigid our identities, shore up any gaps, keep outsiders out....art can speak of such things and perhaps suggest new ways to think outside these rigid frameworks, to open up rather than close down meaning'.
Since 1999 devolution in Britain now means we have a Scottish Parliament, Welsh Assembly and Northern Irish Assembly resulting from the Good Friday Agreement. This cultural, economic and political independence has given rise to the first national representations at Venice from Scotland and Wales in 2003 whilst Northern Ireland followed suit in 2005. The Welsh and Northern Irish Pavilions presented work that strongly referred to national cultures, with clear references to the recent history of the 'Troubles' in Northern Ireland and evident in Williams' poster campaign ‘Wales – cutting it in Venice’ (one of the outcomes from his residency on the island of Giudecca). Bedwyr Williams’ installation for the Collective isn’t quite what you’d expect from an artist whose past practice overtly refers to all things Welsh. Here his preoccupation with the myth of Sir Bedivere - his name sake in the Arthurian tales, he has chosen to built a new installation of cocktail paraphernalia.
Sir Bedivere was a trusty supporter of King Arthur, and one of the first knights to join the fellowship of the Round Table. The story goes that Bedivere was present at the Last Battle, in which he and Arthur alone survived. Bedviere was given the command to throw Excalibur (caledfwlch) back into the Lake where, as legend goes, the hand of the Lady of the Lake came up and retrieved the sword to its watery home.
The earliest surviving reference to Arthur comes in the Welsh annals under the year 519 and he appears in Aneirin's Gododdin as a paragon of valour. Welsh traditions portray Arthur as the great hero in the struggle between the British and the Saxons. In 1181, the monks of Glastonbury claimed to have found his grave; he was therefore a mortal man and was not sleeping in his cave awaiting the opportunity to rid Britain of the English. Instead, he was transformed from being the hero of the Britons into the glorious forerunner of the kings of England. This miraculous turn around in perception, strikes a cord with Williams' own quest to present modern Welsh culture and language, and in particular his own success of making work in the rural north. Living and working in Caernarfon Williams' has maintained that he finds 'the trivialities and absurdities of day to day life in North Wales a constant source of inspiration and amusement'. Williams practice also includes performance in the form of stand up comedy, on the 9th June the Collective will be witness to one of his newest incarnations. Previously in Bard Attitude Williams enrobed as a Celtic druid and carrying a harp plays with the cliché of Welsh heritage, recanting tales of snobbery and parochial mannerism whilst living in London. In relation to more recent history, Holylands by Seamus Harahan although not deliberately political the work is unavoidably contextualised by Northern Ireland's recent conflicts. Shot from his window in the Holy Land's district of Belfast, the piece is rooted in it's locality, as Harahan witnesses the peculiar and sometimes seemingly threatening events through a hand-held video camera. Harahan describes his film making process as ‘about looking, recording before thought, the visual consequence of an absent minded gaze in response to the world; locating yourself, locating others’.
From the safety of his flat Harahan’s voyeuristic gaze captured scenes of urban life over a period of eighteen months. The film finds the poetic quality, beauty and playfulness within marginalised lives; an old man collecting sticks, track suit clad kids playing in the water from an open highdrane - all within the menacing present of the planes overhead and rampaging students. The pace and main source of humour in the film is provided by the accompanying soundscape, splicing events with many different music genres from traditional Irish folk to hip hop and Bach.
One sound track is more reminiscent of Holy Land’s surrounding street names; Jerusalem Street, Palestine Street and Damascus Street. This coupled with the returning gaze to “SUPPORT THE TURKISH DEATH FAST”, graffitied on a temporary building site fence, infers an awareness of other global areas of conflict. A trait confirmed by Roisin McDonough as she believes ‘prosperity has bred a newfound confidence, and the arts have become less introspective and more outward looking’ .