From A to B [via C]

10 October - 2 November 2001

For the exhibition From A to B [via C] contributors were invited to examine the concept of mapping and location. Their resulting works range from the cultural and personal to the geographical and phenomenological.


On the first two floors, From A to B [via C] exhibits the physical work of S2, Adam Williams and Wig Sayell. On the top floor, the via CD Rom (curated by Stefhan Caddick) presents the digital work of 12 artists. This exhibition is a journey into the concept of mapping, how we locate ourselves, and the very notion of making a journey from a beginning (A) to an end point (B).

Adam Williams’ work observes transitional spaces. His work allows us to take a step back from banal and often unconsidered places to the position of ‘viewer’ and re-look at the physicality of the modern world. Airports, car parks and shopping centres are all non-places, in which we are bodies passing through, existing as transient beings in place and time. We are neither where we were nor where we are going to be. Lungs fed by conditioned air, we constantly move on towards arrival or departure.

The very idea of photography seeks to locate the viewer in a place other than at present. Using projection, Wig Sayell takes us to four compass points in the South Wales valleys and positions us at a recommended viewpoint by the side of the road. Once thriving communities before the demise of the coal industry, these points are located around the country and seek to perpetuate the idea of a rural idyll. Using these methods of framing, Sayell seeks to question the ideals of this green and pleasant land by re-creating a panorama within the gallery space.

Working both off-site and in the gallery, the collaboration S2 constructs private moments in the city's history by using commemorative wreaths pointing to specific events. In the gallery we are shown the wreaths on video taken from the City of Cardiff bus tour. The commemorative wreaths add to the experience of the bus tour, while our selective ‘tour’ in the gallery states only the city’s historic facts and physical statistics, which ignore the city in the present. Essentially S2 use the city as a site to be both intervened in and deconstructed; the city is laid open like a map to be performed upon.

Whether you are static, on the move, thinking about yesterday or tomorrow you will use some kind of mapping process as a means to construct, contextualise and understand these thoughts. From A to B [via C] allows you the space to stand back and re-look at these often forgotten processes of location.

Programme