The summer exhibition in Oriel y Bont is ‘Abracadabra’ which features a selection of sculptural works from the University’s Art Collection. The items on display span a period of more than seven decades and include traditional figurative pieces alongside modernist and contemporary works. The exhibition coincides with the Art UK sculpture project, which aims to add 3d works to the existing online visual database of paintings held by public collections across Britain.
The exhibition title is borrowed from one of the works, ‘Abracadabra’ by multi-media artist Andrew Cooper, who reminds us that, ‘art is in fact a form of trickery – an illusion’. His sculpture itself references the art of the stage magician and the old trick of sawing a body in half. Except with Andrew Cooper’s piece the body is sliced into 250 sections, each one represented by a 3mm sheet of glass out of which a cross-section of the body has been carved, creating a ghostly void when the sections are massed together. Discovering the sculptural works in the USW Art Collection and bringing them out of storage and into the gallery has been full of magical surprises and rather like drawing rabbits out of a hat.
Also in the exhibition are works by: Joanne Ayre, Sam Bakewell (whose Untitled Feet is pictured above), Ronald Bevan, David Binns, John Blakewell, Paul Rhys Bowen, Laurence Burt, Hayley-Jay Daniels, Natalia Dias, David Garner, Robert Harding, Harvey Hood, Dilys Jackson, Bernard Jones, Janis Karlovs, Ingrid Murphy, David Nash, Roland Piché, Lilian Rathmell, Ian Rylatt, Willi Soukop, Geoffrey Swindell, Graham Talbot, Nigel Talbot, Robert Thomas, June Tiley, Matthew Tomlin, Jack Waldron and Islwyn Watkins,
The USW Art Collection has been developed with the help of gifts from The Art Council (ACW) and from the Contemporary Art Society of Wales (CASW) along with donations from artists and notably through acquisitions made through the University Purchase Prize Competition.
Special thanks are due to Nigel Talbot for his assistance in curating the exhibition.