0:00:02 > 0:00:04Welsh Art Of The 20th Century is the story of
0:00:04 > 0:00:07how artists grappled with their tumultuous times,
0:00:07 > 0:00:11producing work that sometimes reflected and sometimes challenged
0:00:11 > 0:00:15the Wales they'd emerged from.
0:00:15 > 0:00:19- Once upon a time, I wanted to- be- one of those artists.
0:00:19 > 0:00:21And after school here in Aberdare,
0:00:21 > 0:00:24I went to Hornsey College of Art in London,
0:00:24 > 0:00:28and straight into the art college revolt of 1968.
0:00:30 > 0:00:35All in agreement, I propose that we now march down to Wood Green Civic Centre.
0:00:35 > 0:00:38'Later, as Minister for the Arts, I hit the headlines
0:00:38 > 0:00:44'when I criticised what I saw as the emptiness of some modern art.
0:00:44 > 0:00:49'Now, I've retired from politics and taken up painting again.
0:00:49 > 0:00:55'In this series, I'm going to look at the story of art in Wales during the 20th century,
0:00:55 > 0:00:59'meet some amazing artists and discover some unforgettable works of art.'
0:01:16 > 0:01:21Welsh art from the 1960s on, like Wales itself, was fast-changing.
0:01:21 > 0:01:24There were new fashions, new music, and new art.
0:01:24 > 0:01:29There were protests in the street, and there was revolution in the air.
0:01:29 > 0:01:33And art was no longer confined to the walls of art galleries.
0:01:33 > 0:01:36It came onto the streets. It could be anywhere.
0:01:42 > 0:01:45Pop artists like the American Andy Warhol
0:01:45 > 0:01:50took the world of consumer society as their subject.
0:01:50 > 0:01:53And in Britain, painters like Peter Blake were also making art
0:01:53 > 0:01:56inspired by the world of music and movies.
0:01:58 > 0:02:03Ifor Davies was born in Treharris in 1935.
0:02:03 > 0:02:06He's now one of the grand old men of Welsh art,
0:02:06 > 0:02:09but in the 1960s, he was a real revolutionary,
0:02:09 > 0:02:13making works of art that were literally explosive.
0:02:14 > 0:02:19I have always wanted to go to the extreme of whatever I'm doing.
0:02:19 > 0:02:23Go to the uttermost point to explore it.
0:02:23 > 0:02:27I think I was the first in Britain, maybe in Europe, to use
0:02:27 > 0:02:30explosives as the essential part of a work of art.
0:02:32 > 0:02:35This was a human figure
0:02:35 > 0:02:39with explosives attached to each of the organs.
0:02:39 > 0:02:44The sight of this transformation of materials, disintegrating -
0:02:44 > 0:02:49there was an element which you could almost call beauty in that.
0:02:51 > 0:02:56I think it had a lot to do with the element of destruction
0:02:56 > 0:02:57in the world.
0:02:57 > 0:03:02Wars, and that element of destruction in society.
0:03:06 > 0:03:11For much of his early career, Ifor was based away from Wales,
0:03:11 > 0:03:13but in the late 1970s,
0:03:13 > 0:03:15he returned home to teach in Newport.
0:03:15 > 0:03:18His work increasingly took on Welsh history and politics
0:03:18 > 0:03:21as its subject matter.
0:03:22 > 0:03:27At one time, you daren't talk about Welsh art.
0:03:27 > 0:03:30It was infra dig. You weren't supposed to
0:03:30 > 0:03:34associate art with Wales.
0:03:34 > 0:03:37Anything Welsh was stigmatised.
0:03:39 > 0:03:43My aim is really to have different ideas coming along
0:03:43 > 0:03:46one after the other, different conceptions of reality.
0:03:46 > 0:03:49Different expressions of myself.
0:03:49 > 0:03:53But a lot of people have said to me, it looks all done by different people.
0:03:53 > 0:03:57Trying to be a bit cheeky, you know. And I quite like that idea.
0:04:00 > 0:04:05In 2010, Ifor created a mosaic of St David for Westminster Cathedral,
0:04:05 > 0:04:08which was unveiled during the papal visit.
0:04:08 > 0:04:11Quite a journey for a '60s art rebel.
0:04:12 > 0:04:14It took me a long time to work on that.
0:04:14 > 0:04:18I'd work during the day, a bit like St David himself did,
0:04:18 > 0:04:20and then do some research in the night.
0:04:20 > 0:04:25I did the design for it, for this mosaic. Life-size.
0:04:25 > 0:04:29The figure of St David, standing on the mound
0:04:29 > 0:04:35which rose up under his feet at Brefi, which became Llanddewi Brefi.
0:04:37 > 0:04:43I've had one or two quite scathing remarks.
0:04:43 > 0:04:45People being quite witty about it.
0:04:45 > 0:04:48One said that he looked like someone from the '70s
0:04:48 > 0:04:50with a fashionable haircut.
0:04:55 > 0:04:59Like Ifor Davies, other artists in the 1960s and 1970s
0:04:59 > 0:05:02made work that criticised consumer society.
0:05:03 > 0:05:08Terry Setch first came to Cardiff in the 1960s.
0:05:08 > 0:05:13The subject matter for his paintings at first seems pretty uninspiring -
0:05:13 > 0:05:18all of the rubbish that washes up on the shore line of Cardiff Bay.
0:05:18 > 0:05:25But out of this detritus, he's created a series of powerful works
0:05:25 > 0:05:27that highlight our disposable society,
0:05:27 > 0:05:30and which have a strange beauty all of their own.
0:05:44 > 0:05:46For over 40 years now, Terry Setch has explored
0:05:46 > 0:05:50the shore line near Penarth like an artistic beachcomber.
0:05:52 > 0:05:55Once I saw that coastline, I had to get down onto that beach
0:05:55 > 0:05:58and start walking, and head up towards Lavernock.
0:05:58 > 0:06:00And that was an exciting thing.
0:06:02 > 0:06:03I was fixed
0:06:03 > 0:06:08and it almost became a sublime place.
0:06:08 > 0:06:10The two islands that change,
0:06:10 > 0:06:12disappear in the mist,
0:06:12 > 0:06:14and then they appear again.
0:06:14 > 0:06:18Walking towards Sully, and lo and behold, there's a car.
0:06:18 > 0:06:22It's on the beach. You look up, you can see where it's coming from.
0:06:22 > 0:06:27And I thought, well, joy riders, tipping them over and crashing down.
0:06:30 > 0:06:35The conjuncture of these two opposite things which people have
0:06:35 > 0:06:39very strong opinions about - one is nice, one is nasty.
0:06:39 > 0:06:41One is violent, and yet the other one's violent,
0:06:41 > 0:06:44but it's violent in a different way. Nature.
0:06:48 > 0:06:52One of the themes that you've been exploring is the whole question of pollution
0:06:52 > 0:06:56and what it does to us and what it does to our landscape and why we do it.
0:06:56 > 0:06:59When did you become interested in this?
0:06:59 > 0:07:02Oil came into it, in a very big way.
0:07:02 > 0:07:04I think the Torrey Canyon went down in '68,
0:07:04 > 0:07:07something like that.
0:07:07 > 0:07:13- In the Scilly Isles.- Yes. And, there was this pollution on beaches.
0:07:13 > 0:07:17This oil business. And I think it's been growing and growing and growing.
0:07:17 > 0:07:22It seems fundamentally one of the things which is constantly
0:07:22 > 0:07:26making all manner of greed and pollution.
0:07:26 > 0:07:29So I made a very large painting which was called
0:07:29 > 0:07:31Once Upon A Time There Was Oil,
0:07:31 > 0:07:33which is the picture the Tate bought.
0:07:33 > 0:07:37- Tate Britain?- Yes. It may not be the most significant painting,
0:07:37 > 0:07:40it's one of the largest paintings in the collection.
0:07:40 > 0:07:43They've got one of the most significant titles, if you like,
0:07:43 > 0:07:46because in fact, it's a thing that's gone on
0:07:46 > 0:07:49for decades and decades and it's still going on.
0:07:52 > 0:07:54There's a maturity to Terry Setch's work
0:07:54 > 0:07:57that's born of decades of experiment and study.
0:08:02 > 0:08:07Another member of the '60s generation who shares that depth of experience
0:08:07 > 0:08:10is Wales's most internationally acclaimed artist,
0:08:10 > 0:08:12the sculptor David Nash.
0:08:14 > 0:08:17He came to Blaenau Ffestiniog in the late 1960s.
0:08:17 > 0:08:22And for four decades, this place, its landscape, its people,
0:08:22 > 0:08:24have had an influence on his work.
0:08:30 > 0:08:34Coming to Blaenau Ffestiniog was a turning point in David's work,
0:08:34 > 0:08:38and showed him the potential of using natural materials close to hand.
0:08:40 > 0:08:43I've known this area since I was three.
0:08:43 > 0:08:47My grandparents have lived nearly all their lives in north Wales.
0:08:47 > 0:08:51The weather is a very strong phenomenon here.
0:08:51 > 0:08:54And it draws you much more into natural cycles,
0:08:54 > 0:08:58so I started hitting the wood with an axe, fresh, unseasoned wood,
0:08:58 > 0:09:02which splits much more easily. And it has behaviour -
0:09:02 > 0:09:06as it tries out, it shrinks and warps and bends and does something.
0:09:06 > 0:09:10It goes on forming itself after I've stopped carving.
0:09:16 > 0:09:21In 2010, there was a major retrospective of David Nash's work
0:09:21 > 0:09:23at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park.
0:09:30 > 0:09:34It was a while before I found my work, which is really
0:09:34 > 0:09:38those nine cracked balls which are at the sculpture park.
0:09:38 > 0:09:41When they were making the playing field, opposite here,
0:09:41 > 0:09:45there was a small ash was cut down and I got it and I cut with an axe,
0:09:45 > 0:09:48nine lumps and they just split open on their own.
0:09:48 > 0:09:52This was a revelation to me, because I was still making these coloured things,
0:09:52 > 0:09:58but I just was aware that I needed to enter into the material I was using more,
0:09:58 > 0:10:00and that was really my first real step.
0:10:00 > 0:10:03It was like going back to kindergarten,
0:10:03 > 0:10:07and really, in a way, I stayed there because there's so much to do.
0:10:13 > 0:10:17David Nash also works in the landscape itself.
0:10:17 > 0:10:20His ash dome is a living work of art,
0:10:20 > 0:10:22made out of a circle of ash trees,
0:10:22 > 0:10:25which David planted in the late 1970s.
0:10:25 > 0:10:29He keeps its location secret and for 40 years
0:10:29 > 0:10:34he's carefully trained and pruned the trees to form a dome.
0:10:45 > 0:10:49The North Wales landscape also had a profound effect
0:10:49 > 0:10:51on the painter Peter Prendergast.
0:10:51 > 0:10:54Although he was born near Caerphilly,
0:10:54 > 0:10:58he lived just outside Bethesda for many years until his death in 2007.
0:10:58 > 0:11:02The year before he died, he was filmed near South Stack in Anglesey,
0:11:02 > 0:11:08sketching for what would be his last epic painting, Close To Ellin's Twr.
0:11:08 > 0:11:11The way the work has developed is by simply observing and trying to
0:11:11 > 0:11:15understand what's happening, visually and physically,
0:11:15 > 0:11:19and then trying to invent a way of describing what I can see.
0:11:19 > 0:11:22I prefer really to compare what I'm doing with what Turner did,
0:11:22 > 0:11:25than to compare it with somebody
0:11:25 > 0:11:27who's just painting souvenirs of the scene.
0:11:27 > 0:11:30If I wanted to make something which was realistic,
0:11:30 > 0:11:33then I'd come and just take photographs.
0:11:38 > 0:11:40Homecomings are a common theme
0:11:40 > 0:11:42in Welsh art of the late 20th century.
0:11:42 > 0:11:47If artists in earlier decades felt they had to work away in London,
0:11:47 > 0:11:51more recently many have been drawn back to Wales.
0:11:54 > 0:11:57Kevin Sinnott was born in Sarn near Bridgend.
0:11:57 > 0:12:00He studied at the Royal College of Art and worked successfully
0:12:00 > 0:12:04in London before returning to South Wales 15 years ago.
0:12:04 > 0:12:07He's now one of Wales's most popular artists,
0:12:07 > 0:12:11with exuberant figure paintings set in the valleys near his home.
0:12:13 > 0:12:19Kevin, you're one of the few painters who, for me,
0:12:19 > 0:12:23actually paints what Wales is about.
0:12:23 > 0:12:27It looks like Wales, it feels like Wales,
0:12:27 > 0:12:33and I get the vibrancy of this landscape in your paintings.
0:12:33 > 0:12:36I do like to think of them as being about the community
0:12:36 > 0:12:38and about life and about the warmth
0:12:38 > 0:12:43and about the characters that you see in the valleys of Wales
0:12:43 > 0:12:46and the passion, rather than a miner going to work.
0:12:46 > 0:12:49Of course there weren't any miners going to work
0:12:49 > 0:12:50by the time I got back here anyway.
0:12:50 > 0:12:54I'd rather paint a young girl flying a kite.
0:12:55 > 0:12:58It's a process that is initially quite abstract,
0:12:58 > 0:13:01more akin to abstract expressionism than it is to
0:13:01 > 0:13:06more traditional, realistic, figurative painting, initially.
0:13:06 > 0:13:09This is where the dynamism of the compositions comes from.
0:13:09 > 0:13:13It comes from being immersed in the art.
0:13:21 > 0:13:25One of the most popular paintings that's come out of Wales,
0:13:25 > 0:13:27or anywhere, over the last 30 years
0:13:27 > 0:13:31is your painting Running Away With The Hairdresser.
0:13:31 > 0:13:33Where did the idea for that come from?
0:13:33 > 0:13:37I did this painting of this one single guy,
0:13:37 > 0:13:39just his torso, running away.
0:13:39 > 0:13:43His arms are pumping against a background of terraced houses.
0:13:43 > 0:13:45A very simple idea.
0:13:45 > 0:13:48It's aspirational, in a way.
0:13:48 > 0:13:52This guy is running away. Where to?
0:13:52 > 0:13:54University, perhaps, better things.
0:13:54 > 0:13:56And I did another figure,
0:13:56 > 0:14:00and so it became a guy running away with a girl, or vice versa.
0:14:00 > 0:14:04He could be leaving his wife to go and live around the corner.
0:14:04 > 0:14:08He's not necessarily running away from his background, he's simply running away.
0:14:08 > 0:14:12The title, I don't know where it came from.
0:14:12 > 0:14:14She didn't have a comb in her hand.
0:14:14 > 0:14:17He didn't have a hair dryer.
0:14:18 > 0:14:23My brother-in-law actually left his wife for a hairdresser.
0:14:23 > 0:14:25It took place in Wales.
0:14:25 > 0:14:29They weren't on my mind. They definitely weren't on my mind.
0:14:29 > 0:14:31I just thought "running away with the hairdresser",
0:14:31 > 0:14:34it's about running away.
0:14:34 > 0:14:37It's about...
0:14:37 > 0:14:38It's what I did, I suppose.
0:14:43 > 0:14:48All the artists in this programme and for much of the series so far have been men,
0:14:48 > 0:14:53but with the emergence of feminism in the 1970s, Welsh women artists
0:14:53 > 0:14:56have increasingly made their presence felt.
0:14:58 > 0:15:02Mary Lloyd Jones has been an artist since the 1950s,
0:15:02 > 0:15:05making beautifully coloured paintings inspired by
0:15:05 > 0:15:09the landscape around her Devil's Bridge birthplace.
0:15:09 > 0:15:14If it wasn't for living in Wales, I think, and I suppose West Wales,
0:15:14 > 0:15:18I wouldn't be painting at all, because it is
0:15:18 > 0:15:23going out into the countryside and seeing all the geology.
0:15:23 > 0:15:27There's such variety in Wales.
0:15:27 > 0:15:30I think the landscape is the subject.
0:15:30 > 0:15:33You can't get away from the lead mines, you see.
0:15:33 > 0:15:37They're such a feature of this landscape.
0:15:37 > 0:15:44Initially, I think the contrast of colour was what drew me.
0:15:44 > 0:15:50You've got lots and lots of green, then you'll have this slab of grey.
0:15:50 > 0:15:55The stone sort of sparkles in certain lights.
0:16:04 > 0:16:11In the early 1970s, feminism and women's liberation swept across the whole landscape.
0:16:11 > 0:16:13How did that affect you?
0:16:13 > 0:16:17Well, I was very excited about all of those developments
0:16:17 > 0:16:20and all those books that came out. I read them all.
0:16:20 > 0:16:24I was very fired by it all.
0:16:24 > 0:16:31I wanted my work to say clearly that "This is made by a woman."
0:16:31 > 0:16:38That's how I got into working with the fabrics, the cloth and the dyes.
0:16:38 > 0:16:42Then I thought, "I want to make a connection with the quilting,
0:16:42 > 0:16:49"this largely geometric tradition, very bold, strong shapes,
0:16:49 > 0:16:51"and the landscape."
0:16:51 > 0:16:57And I thought if, "I can bring these two things together, that will be interesting."
0:16:57 > 0:17:00By showing the landscape
0:17:00 > 0:17:06or elements from the natural world in this method,
0:17:06 > 0:17:12using these materials, it would appear fragile and threatened.
0:17:12 > 0:17:18So feminism enabled me to make this sort of language.
0:17:18 > 0:17:22There were very few women artists working at that time.
0:17:22 > 0:17:25Was that an added difficulty for you?
0:17:25 > 0:17:27Well, yes. I think
0:17:27 > 0:17:30it's always... It's not a level playing field at all.
0:17:32 > 0:17:38Although this situation has got a lot better, and I think there are a lot
0:17:38 > 0:17:43of very good women artists working in Wales at this present time.
0:17:43 > 0:17:47But you're always in the minority.
0:17:47 > 0:17:52It was quite uncomfortable, but I thought, "Stick it out."
0:17:57 > 0:18:01Another important woman artist in Wales is Sue Williams.
0:18:01 > 0:18:04Arguably her powerful and challenging work
0:18:04 > 0:18:08could only come from a woman's perspective.
0:18:08 > 0:18:12Her large-scale paintings are full of provocative imagery,
0:18:12 > 0:18:15dealing explicitly with sexuality, abuse and violence,
0:18:15 > 0:18:19although often undercut with her savage wit.
0:18:27 > 0:18:32Shani Rhys James is Wales's best-known female artist.
0:18:32 > 0:18:34Born in Australia to a Welsh father,
0:18:34 > 0:18:36she came to work in Wales in the 1980s.
0:18:36 > 0:18:39She often uses her own face in her paintings,
0:18:39 > 0:18:43and the results are frequently disconcerting.
0:18:55 > 0:19:00Shani, the faces in your paintings are very raw faces.
0:19:00 > 0:19:03Are they based on self-portraits,
0:19:03 > 0:19:05or are they about a wider psychology?
0:19:05 > 0:19:10Well, they are often my head,
0:19:10 > 0:19:12although I don't really think of it as my head.
0:19:13 > 0:19:18When you say rawness, it's trying to get past that mask, if you like,
0:19:18 > 0:19:20that everybody puts up.
0:19:20 > 0:19:23This whole enormous pressure that women have
0:19:23 > 0:19:26to be beautiful, to be perfect,
0:19:26 > 0:19:29whether their face is dropping or needs to be lifted up,
0:19:29 > 0:19:34and all the thing about age that we are obsessed about.
0:19:34 > 0:19:36I think what I'm really trying to do
0:19:36 > 0:19:41is to show the rawness of a woman actually being a human being.
0:19:43 > 0:19:46More than anybody else I know, you've got signature colours.
0:19:46 > 0:19:51Are you a conscious user of a fairly limited palette?
0:19:51 > 0:19:54It's the most powerful colour, red.
0:19:54 > 0:19:56It's so primal.
0:19:56 > 0:20:01My paintings are about contact and powerfulness
0:20:01 > 0:20:05and just showing what I feel and just saying, "This is what it is.
0:20:05 > 0:20:08"This is what I feel. This is what I have experienced."
0:20:08 > 0:20:10Still lifes, yeah, I like doing still lifes,
0:20:10 > 0:20:14but that's not what it's about. It's about a political stance.
0:20:14 > 0:20:17I'm very interested in the psychology of people and the humanness
0:20:17 > 0:20:19of people and not doing pretty little paintings,
0:20:19 > 0:20:23but doing something that makes people question themselves.
0:20:23 > 0:20:26So when you get this isolated child in the cot,
0:20:26 > 0:20:30it's not a direct autobiographical rendition,
0:20:30 > 0:20:31it's about a metaphor.
0:20:31 > 0:20:35It's about a symbol of something, our human condition.
0:20:35 > 0:20:37It's about how we treat children in this country.
0:20:37 > 0:20:40What is a child? A child is a little spirit,
0:20:40 > 0:20:44a spirit that's there, ready, open and receptive.
0:20:44 > 0:20:48And I have a right to my existence and I'm here
0:20:48 > 0:20:51and I am as much a human being as an adult.
0:20:51 > 0:20:55It's really a lot to do with the innocence of a child.
0:21:06 > 0:21:10Since the 1960s, questions of national identity
0:21:10 > 0:21:13became important issues for some artists in Wales.
0:21:13 > 0:21:19They began to explore the widely held images of Wales and Welsh stereotypes.
0:21:19 > 0:21:22Some of them found inspiration in the campaigns to promote
0:21:22 > 0:21:26the Welsh language and in the ideals of Welsh nationalism.
0:21:30 > 0:21:32One of these artists is Iwan Bala
0:21:32 > 0:21:37who combines Welsh imagery, writing and history in his work.
0:21:38 > 0:21:40In Wales there was Becker, Ifor Davies,
0:21:40 > 0:21:45Paul Davies, there was the writing of Peter Lord.
0:21:45 > 0:21:49There were lots of things that seemed to be reaching a critical mass
0:21:49 > 0:21:53about how Welsh culture could start talking about itself,
0:21:53 > 0:21:56rather than being looked at or viewed from the outside.
0:21:56 > 0:21:59So this idea of wanting to remake Wales.
0:21:59 > 0:22:03I guess that's what I'm doing in the paintings, is Wales reappears in
0:22:03 > 0:22:07different guises, because all through history that's what has happened.
0:22:09 > 0:22:14You are using images of Wales, but the core image is a map of Wales.
0:22:14 > 0:22:20It started off as a kind of Wales shape, like an island on the horizon.
0:22:20 > 0:22:23But it was the shape that we would recognise from the map.
0:22:23 > 0:22:27It's not about total patriotism, it's not about nationalism.
0:22:27 > 0:22:34It's about the ideas that people form from their early life
0:22:34 > 0:22:37and how do they think in certain ways about certain places?
0:22:44 > 0:22:49These works relate to the times I'm living in and the things
0:22:49 > 0:22:53I've come across and read and written and whatever, you know.
0:22:53 > 0:22:57Gwyn Alf Williams you've caught quite a lot here.
0:22:57 > 0:23:00Gwyn has used the term "remembrancer".
0:23:00 > 0:23:03Are you a remembrancer or a creator?
0:23:03 > 0:23:07The history of Wales is something that has to be kept alive,
0:23:07 > 0:23:11in a sense, because as a minority small nation status,
0:23:11 > 0:23:15it has been difficult sometimes to keep that history alive.
0:23:15 > 0:23:19When you're looking forward, you make sure you're also looking back.
0:23:19 > 0:23:22If we forget history then we're in trouble.
0:23:22 > 0:23:28I see myself as a participant in a new Wales, in a way.
0:23:28 > 0:23:31A Wales that is looking forward, that is developing
0:23:31 > 0:23:35in ways that we couldn't have imagined 20 years ago.
0:23:46 > 0:23:48By the end of the 20th century,
0:23:48 > 0:23:51there were thousands of artists working in Wales
0:23:51 > 0:23:53and dozens of galleries and arts centres,
0:23:53 > 0:23:56many financed out of the public purse,
0:23:56 > 0:24:02like this multi-million-pound extension to Oriel Mostyn in Llandudno.
0:24:09 > 0:24:14On show at Oriel Mostyn is an exhibition by Tim Davies.
0:24:14 > 0:24:17The Welsh representative at the 2011 Venice Biennale,
0:24:17 > 0:24:21Tim is a conceptual artist whose art is
0:24:21 > 0:24:26as much about the ideas behind the work as the images on the wall.
0:24:26 > 0:24:29Tim Davies's work is often about memory
0:24:29 > 0:24:33and the traces left by previous generations.
0:24:33 > 0:24:36One part of the Oriel Mostyn exhibition
0:24:36 > 0:24:37is called Figures in a Landscape
0:24:37 > 0:24:40and is made up of dozens of old postcards
0:24:40 > 0:24:44from which the people in them have been carefully removed.
0:24:44 > 0:24:47We don't use postcards as much as we used to.
0:24:47 > 0:24:51In their own little way, no matter how banal some comments might be,
0:24:51 > 0:24:52the "wish you were here" scenario,
0:24:52 > 0:24:54there's a little social comment
0:24:54 > 0:24:58of that person writing this card at that moment in time.
0:24:58 > 0:25:01The figures themselves,
0:25:01 > 0:25:04I began to become interested in this notion of figures
0:25:04 > 0:25:09parading in costume, if you like, a national costume or folk costume.
0:25:09 > 0:25:14Occasionally on the back of a card it will say "typical costumes and dances".
0:25:14 > 0:25:17The words in the title, particularly in this piece,
0:25:17 > 0:25:19are very carefully chosen. It's very simple.
0:25:19 > 0:25:23Figures in a Landscape. Where are the figures? The figures aren't there.
0:25:23 > 0:25:26That's a very simple question, and one can get that.
0:25:26 > 0:25:29The figures are not in the landscape. So am I looking at a landscape?
0:25:29 > 0:25:32In this case, we see the reverse.
0:25:32 > 0:25:35You're not. So that's a card I found
0:25:35 > 0:25:39where clearly someone bought it and decided not to use it.
0:25:39 > 0:25:42But by reversing the card, the figures are still in a landscape.
0:25:42 > 0:25:46It almost becomes a curious, minimalist landscape.
0:25:46 > 0:25:51These figures - disparate, scattered, removed and lost,
0:25:51 > 0:25:53are looking for places.
0:25:53 > 0:25:55So for me that just touches upon
0:25:55 > 0:25:59one of our many contemporary questions about
0:25:59 > 0:26:03figures in terms of identity but also figures in terms of belonging.
0:26:03 > 0:26:04You know, borders.
0:26:04 > 0:26:09We hear a lot about border controls, asylum seekers, refugees.
0:26:09 > 0:26:11That's really where the starting point is.
0:26:11 > 0:26:14I don't expect an audience necessarily to get that.
0:26:20 > 0:26:22I think ambiguity is not such a bad thing.
0:26:22 > 0:26:25I'm just someone who happens to be an artist
0:26:25 > 0:26:29who's trying to grapple with certain questions
0:26:29 > 0:26:35that I think we could ask ourselves, in terms of humanity.
0:26:45 > 0:26:48I met curator Karen MacKinnon at the beginning of the series.
0:26:48 > 0:26:51I caught up with her again at Oriel Mostyn
0:26:51 > 0:26:54to talk about the current state of Welsh art.
0:26:54 > 0:26:58I think we do produce really good artists in Wales.
0:26:58 > 0:27:02There's really brilliant artists and art,
0:27:02 > 0:27:06and when we show at the Venice Biennale, for instance,
0:27:06 > 0:27:09I think the artists that we show there can stand alongside
0:27:09 > 0:27:13any of those other artists or pavilions from anywhere in the world.
0:27:13 > 0:27:16If you look at the last show that was at the Mostyn Gallery,
0:27:16 > 0:27:20Mirrors And Plans, in which 25 artists from across Wales were shown,
0:27:20 > 0:27:23and this is the first show in a series of shows.
0:27:23 > 0:27:27I think they're going to do it every couple of years. It was incredible
0:27:27 > 0:27:31because you had painting, installation, sculpture, video.
0:27:31 > 0:27:34It's really, really diverse and vibrant.
0:27:34 > 0:27:38Artists are just taking ideas in any kind of direction
0:27:38 > 0:27:42and working in so many different ways.
0:27:42 > 0:27:46There are big issues to face in terms of funding for the arts,
0:27:46 > 0:27:49of course, for the whole of the country.
0:27:49 > 0:27:50Major cuts.
0:27:50 > 0:27:56I think despite that, artists will continue to work and find other ways to work.
0:27:56 > 0:28:00Wales will continue to have a really vibrant art scene.
0:28:09 > 0:28:12The art produced in Wales in the 20th century
0:28:12 > 0:28:16bears comparison with art produced anywhere in the world.
0:28:16 > 0:28:20It is as rich in its inventiveness, quality and variety
0:28:20 > 0:28:25as any art produced in London, New York or Paris.
0:28:25 > 0:28:30What the future holds for art in Wales depends not only on the value
0:28:30 > 0:28:33that we place on what's been achieved already,
0:28:33 > 0:28:39but on how we judge the importance of training and supporting new generations of artists
0:28:39 > 0:28:45so that they might continue to enrich our lives in a thousand different ways.
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