Perspective(s)
Perspective(s), is an ambitious Welsh arts programme, that brings together seven ethnically and culturally diverse artists with a connection to Wales, working in collaboration with all seven Amgueddfa Cymru – Museum Wales sites and visual arts organisations nationwide.
Perspective(s) examines hidden histories within Wales’ national museums, from Welsh Plains used to clothe enslaved Africans to the lavish red sofa of Robert Clive, a figure central to British colonialism in India. The programme tackles complex and painful legacies; it rethinks the past to pave the way for a more inclusive future, one that acknowledges the diverse contributions and experiences that have shaped Wales and the world.
Credit: Portrait of Hannan Jones. Photography - Hicham Gardaf
Credit: Slip testing with River Folk Pottery as part of the Perspective(s) programme with Hannan Jones.
Partnered with the National Roman Legion Museum we are working with artist Hannan Jones. ‘A Frontier in Depth’, investigates how shifting boundaries influence our understanding of identity and place through a sequence of presentations.
A trilogy of short films, beginning in the National Roman Legion Museum’s subterranean archive, pictures displayed artefacts that embody multiple narratives, raising questions of how these items shape collective memory and fragmented histories. Expanding outward, the second film is driven by soundscapes around us, while the third focuses on the celestial – a tool for navigation and governance throughout time.
Collaborating with young people from Newport Youth Academy, members of Roots Newport and River Folk Pottery resulted in a series of new clay vessels embodying reflections on the present and future.
And the project will culminate in a new context-specific multi-channel soundscape within the Caerleon Amphitheatre, merging past and present to amplify imaginary potentials that could lie ahead.
Keep an eye out for news about future launch events in January, plus film and sound installations and publications in spring 2025.
Find out more about Perspective(s) and the other six artists.
Hannan Jones delves into ideas surrounding hybridity, language, cultural and social rhythms associated with migration, and psycho-geography. Across sound, sculpture, installation, and moving images, she seeks to foster ‘togetherness’ creating spaces to expand perspectives. A 2023 Oram Award winner and graduate of Glasgow School of Art, past projects – presented internationally – retrace free speech movements, highlight survival tactics, and examine ways to navigate and occupy public space to subvert economic and environmental precarity. Sonically, she uses improvisation, electronics, musique concrète, and analogue recordings, employing sampling and audio layering, to create alternate narratives and reclaim parallel histories.
Hannan Jones, “Perspective(s) resonated with my own diasporic background to allow navigation between histories of migration and Empire. Being Welsh and North African but raised in Australia, I am deeply engaged with social and cultural migration, placemaking and storytelling.”
Please click images to enlarge
A collaboration with Arts Council of Wales and Amgueddfa Cymru – Museum Wales, Perspective(s) forms part of Wales’s Anti-Racist Action Plan, with support from the Welsh Government.
