Strata Florida and the Arts
The Abbey of Strata Florida had, in the Middle Ages, a strong tradition of promoting and patronising the spoken, written and plastic arts, whether in the form of the poetry of Dafydd ap Gwilym or the remarkable architectural and other sculpture of which we have only bare fragments. The Strata Florida Project has a specific, consciously-constructed engagement with the contemporary creative Arts continuing and echoing this tradition. This has developed so far as an initial series of working relationships with specific artists and in two sculpture shows promoted and staged by the community of Ystrad Fflur (Pontrhydfendigaid) and its partner, the community of Kells in Co Kilkenny.
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 The Yew of Dafydd ap Gwilym and the Sculptural Installation of Iwan Bala in St Mary’s churchyard, Strata Florida (David Austin). Enlargement/description |
The connection with Ireland began as a series of initial meetings organised by Professor David Austin, with Kells identified as a potential ‘soul-mate’ because it too has the remains of a major monastic site in its midst. At Kells the community group (KRETE) had already developed a highly successful annual exhibition of contemporary sculpture as part of the Kilkenny Arts Festival and in 2005 and 2006 the European Community, through an Interreg III grant, enabled the two places to have a joint show, with prominent artists from the two countries. In both places the monastic sites were used as the core of the venues and international artists were invited to display items of their work relevant to the locations.
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The research programme has worked, and will continue to work, also with photographic artists, not simply in the matter of recording both process and presence of the material past amidst its contemporary context, but also in the generation of other ways of seeing and narrating the past and its associations. Two artists in particular have produced major bodies of work which are closely related to the research programme: Moyrah Gall and Pete Davis (follow external links to their web sites).
Moyrah Gall’s work in the beginning focussed on the house and buildings at Mynachlog Fawr, on its people (especially the Arch family) and on the process of archaeological and anthropological recording and analysis being conducted there. This was the subject of an exhibition in 2005 as part of the sculpture show that year where David Austin and Moyrah Gall explored a range of graphic images and material artefacts which represent and narrate the complex history of the site and its people. Moyrah has since gone on to articulate her images in an important show, called Shooting the Past, exhibited in both London and Hereford. More recently she has turned her attention to the landscapes of mining at Strata Florida, producing images funded by the Spirit of the Miners project.
Pete Davis, Senior Lecturer in Photography at the University of Wales Newport, has, by contrast, worked in the demesne woodland of Strata Florida within a wider body of work called Wildwood.
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There is a close relationship between archaeology and the arts in the way they are both engaged in the re-creation and re-presentation of the material past in physical form. We believe that the creative arts and their academic exploration have an important part to play in developing the research design and exploring inter-disciplinary procedures which can lead to greater insight and to new expressions of our relationship with the past present in our landscapes.
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