I went to the ‘National Museum Wales’ with my friend Natasha and her beautiful little boy Jesse for the opening weekend of Artes Mundi 6.
Artes Mundi is an internationally focused arts organisation,
which shows in Cardiff every 2 years.
“[Artes Mundi] identifies, recognises and supports contemporary visual artists who engage with the human condition, social reality and lived experience and is best known for its biennial international Exhibition and Prize which takes place in Cardiff.”
Carlos Bunga
My favourite piece of the whole exhibition was the large scale installation made of cardboard by Carlos Bunga. This stretched floor to ceiling and reminded me of looking up at a grand church ceiling.
His work relates to the work I created in my final year of my degree and I also really enjoyed Carlos Bungo’s books which were in the learning resources space, there will be a blog post to follow about those and the other inspiring artists books.
Theaster Gate is really interested in ‘rituals’ instead of ‘religion’. He uses an incredibly devise range of objects for his sculptural installations, including for Artes Mundi 6, a stuffed goat, which is used in masonic rituals (as seen below).
The goat is placed on a pedestal on wheels and moves around a railway track.
Baby in the museum.
Renata Lucas
It was interesting to interact and play with this work, particularly bringing the buggy through the space, we weren’t sure to start with if this was allowed, but we were encouraged to make the space our own, part of the installation was left flatten to allow Jesse’s buggy to glide over the surface. Natasha and I both lifted different aspects of the installation to create these A-frame type shapes, in pulling up some pieces, other fell to the floor, much to our surprise.
Renzo Martens
and
The Institute for Human Activities
Renzo spends a lot of his time in the Congo and creates well known provocative films. In the Congo he has set up an alternative arts centre called the ‘Institute for Human Activities’ and the idea is that art work can change a city’s culture, economic wealth and regeneration. He believes this model can work in one of the poorest places on earth. His work features chocolate sculptures, self-portraits of the people working on plantations in the Congo who get paid very little and work in terrible conditions.
I definitely checked if the sculptures were actually made of chocolate and I can confirm that indeed they are and they smelt delicious. Also the room these sculptures were in was a little colder than the rest of the exhibition…I wonder why?
Omer Fast
Exhibition Interactivity
Jesse liked the exhibition a lot.
DocumentArtist by Bethie Helliwell 