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Visions of the Valleys
Attic Gallery Exhibition - Visions of the Valleys
Not everybody from South Wales realises what an extraordinary place it is. Perhaps you need to go away from it and come back again to find out. Its inheritance of industry in isolated, upland valleys has given it an utterly distinctive landscape and society. There are places somewhat like it in coalfields throughout the world - in Pennsylvania, Poland, northern France - but in a sense they all follow it. Wales was the original. Its ironworks towns and coalfield valleys set lasting patterns, and it was the first nation where more people worked in industry than agriculture.
The exhibition is intended as a celebration of ten artists represented by Attic Gallery, who have taken the South Wales Valleys and its communities as their subject matter. It is being held during the year marking the 20th anniversary of the miners' strike, the failure of which was such a major blow to the communities of the South Wales Valleys. However, this was only one of a series of changes that have pushed Wales into becoming the world's first post-industrial nation.
A number of the artists in the exhibition have been painting this subject since the 1950's and have witnessed many of these changes. Certain works in the exhibition date back many years, some are new but prepared from drawings made much earlier, while the remainder are contemporaneous. Some are recording an aspect of South Wales that has virtually disappeared, while others explore the effects of these changes on the communities. All are dealing with an era which will no doubt be studied by future generations. Participating artists: Ceri Barclay, David Carpanini, George Chapman, John Cooper, Valerie Ganz, Chris Grifffin, Nick Holly, George Little, Richard Oliver, Will Roberts.
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