Dreaming Awake
Terezin catalogue cover.
Dreaming Awake
Exhibition of Eight Artists from Wales in the Czech Republic
August 2001 - April 2002
Josef Janda, Keith Bayliss and Dada Stepankova at the opening in Terezin.
Once I read a wise sentence: "Arts has no bounds". I don't remember who the author was, but it's not important. It is the very true meaning of the sentence that matters. Let me disclose the origins of "Dreaming Awake" with a short personal confession.
One day in September 1995, I happened to be on a coach going to Wales from London. I had been invited to present my poetry in " The Visual Art " An Exhibition of Responses, which was held in Cardiff and Swansea as part of the U.K. Festival of Literature. My involvement in the project had been arranged by Johannes W. Glaw, a German artist, and a mutual friend of mine and the Welsh artists. To me it seemed like a journey to an unknown land. I had never been in Wales before and I didn't know anybody there in person. Well, I had read a Czech translation of works by the famous poet Dylan Thomas, but to tell the truth that was almost everything I knew about modern Welsh culture at that time. I arrived in Swansea in the afternoon. I was awaited, so my doubts faded away instantly. On the same day in the evening I was acquainted with some of the local artists and literati in the cordial atmosphere of the Westbourne Hotel Pub. We had seen each other for the first time in our lives, but when parting I had the feeling that I happened to be among old friends. I could stay in Wales for a week only, but I shall always have fond memories of this experience. I was impressed by the romantic coast of the Gower Peninsula as well as by the people I met. When I was leaving, we promised we would endeavour to promote mutual recognition of Czech and Welsh contemporary art.
The work of Roger Moss, sculptor and Iwan Bala.
In the several years that passed since then, we already accomplished two projects. An exhibition of graphic works by Keith Bayliss and William Brown at Vyehrad Gallery in Prague in October 1996, and a major retrospective exhibition of Czech and Slovak surrealism in Swansea in 1998. Thus "The Dreaming Awake" exhibition of eight artists from Wales, currently taking place in the Czech Republic, is the third project undertaken together. It started its tour in the Small Fortress exhibition gallery in Terezín National Monument. From the beginning of November till the end of February it is to be housed in Museum Gallery in Horice, a submontane town in East Bohemia. In March the exhibition will be moved to "Práchenské" Regional Museum in Písek, a historic town in South Bohemia, and in April, it will reach its final venue "Ceasar Gallery" in the centre of Olomouc in North Moravia, a city rich in history and culture. So what once originated as an idea, has gradually changed into a reality and into a dialogue lead by artists who feel the urge to meet and share inspiration. Despite the geographic distance between our countries, that spans over half of Europe, we feel close and related.
The poet David Greenslade wrote in the catalogue for the exhibition: " The oneiric option, however,(a way made known to us by Gaston Bachelard) has mythic, organic and material valves that (impossible by daytime's judgement) remain open and closed at the time, welcoming rich, warm blooded, often contradictory flows of thought, sensuality, intuition and feeling. The walking dream, or dreaming while awake, is a flood of lush, difficult, paradoxical activity in the midst of choking plexus of glossy, solar algorithmic double-talk. Sleep and dreams of night are known to the waking mind only via memory. Dreaming awake, however, increases attentive care just where particular, oneiric influx starts to charm and loosen familiar constraints. The work here is therefore not somnambulist; it is alert liberating and generous to imaginal intruders who - also vigilantly cunning-outwit surveillance and boundary procedures, determined to cross towards the artist's hand."
There is no logical transition between dreaming and being awake, and artists have been making most of this fact since long ago. Jan vankmajer, a famous Czech film director and surrealist, says: "There is a sole simple physical act between dream and reality, the lifting and closing of the eye lids. In case of day dreaming even that does not occur."
The exhibiting artists are linked neither by a particular artistic programme, nor by ideological views. As it is, they belong to a generation of middle-aged men and they all have established themselves within the context of contemporary Welsh art. Their home is Wales, a country where one can find not only old Celtic monuments, but where the echoes of ancient traditions and customs are still reflected in the present-day life of modern society. Perhaps these unconscious undercurrents are the very thing that has endowed the artists, whatever diverse in expression, with a certain kind of related vision of the world. At least, it appears that way to my Central European soul. Almost all works presented in the "Dreaming Awake" can be labelled as imaginative. As such can be regarded works that hold both latent contents of dreams as well as fragments of reality. Viewers can decipher the hidden contents of a piece of imaginative arts only through associations and analogies of their own, which are an indispensable part of their individual mental equipment. Only thus, successful communication between the artist and the percipient can happen.
Iwan Bala, an artist and writer, projects into his polemic symbolic works of art not only the present time, but also by history the suppressed desires of past generations. Keith Bayliss's canvases draw from the world of ancient times. A strange cold stiffness and an expressive conception add to them a tinge of fatefulness. Animals are frequent motifs of works by William Brown, a Canadian settled in Wales. Earlier in his career, he became acquainted with the ancestral arts of Native Americans and the Inuits. Animals, in accordance with the traditions of these indigenous peoples, are not mere living objects, but are messengers from the Universe that convey the secrets of Nature to the heart of Man. Tony Goble's bright colours lighten his images of fairy-tale world with fresh spirit of joy. On the contrary, the strange gloomy urgency of Clive Hicks-Jenkins's lyrical canvases evoke disturbance. What spreads out from three dimensional objects and sculptures by Roger Moss is their inner peace. As if in them, basic natural forces and a creative potential of human unconsciousness had met. The author of portraits of individual artists is Bernard Mitchell. His photographs are sensitive probes that capture the artists in their own environment. They disclose the mysterious alchemy that accompanies each genuine process of art-making. A mutual friend of all the involved artists is the Czech glassmaker Jaroslav Mykisa, a native of Olomouc in Moravia, who has been working in Wales for more than twenty years. He has settled in Swansea, where he has his studio, he also designs, restores and teaches architectural glass.
Mirror glass and wood sculpture by Jaroslav Mykisa of Swansea.
At the time of finishing these lines, the "Dreaming Awake" Exhibition is slowly proceeding midway its tour of the Czech Republic. According to the responses so far, it can be already stated that its mission has been successful. It demonstrates that the current unification of Europe is more than a pure boring economic and political business. The whole process may have many forms. Learning about spiritual affinity is one of them. Visual art, the language without words, is proving to be excellent medium for this kind of communication.
November 2001 / Josef Janda
Dreaming Awake
exhibits the use of narrative in art displayed through the work of seven artists living and working in Wales.
Dream, myth, hope, desire, history and memory make themselves evident in a highly personal, sometimes humorous, often colourful, but always serious way.
The exhibition contains paintings, graphic works, sculpture and glass works.
The exhibition was curated by artist Keith Bayliss and was first exhibited at Llantarnam Grange Arts Centre in 1999.
It will tour the Czech Republic from August 2001. Starting its tour at Pamatka Terezin, touring three further venues over a minimum six month period.
Dreaming Awake - Seven Visionary Artists:
Keith bayliss
Williams Brown
Iwan Bala
Roger Moss
Anthony Goble
Clive Hicks-Jenkins
Jaroslav Mykisa
The exhibition contains photographs of the artists by Bernard Mitchell
