Ynyshir is a typical small town in the Rhondda Fach that developed in the mid 1850s in pursuit of coal.
In May 2014, the town’s library was closed as a result of government spending cuts. Gayle Rogers, whose husband Chris Williams’ studio was next door to the library, had already been involved in the successful campaign to save Aberdare’s Cynon Valley Museum from closure. In July 2014, she prevented the library being sold at auction and negotiated a lease on the building. In November 2014, the library opened as the Workers Gallery and hosted its first exhibition.
At the time, Gayle stressed the importance of ‘art activism’ in preserving the threatened cultural history of the valleys. The Gallery is about to celebrate its fifth birthday and has secured its place both as a cultural centre and as a community hub.
Today, the Gallery describes itself on its website as a place where ‘artists, photographers, musicians and writers use their creativity and art activism to help our community flourish’. As well as discovering and promoting local artists, the Gallery attracts artists of national and international importance. For example, in July 2019, the Workers hosted Jim Mortram’s ‘Small Town Inertia’ as a demonstration of how art can agitate for social change. At the time, Rogers wrote, of the work of the Gallery and its reach beyond the curatorial;
In response to local demand we offer a photocopying service, run a knitting & sewing group, run activities with the local school and family art groups and we hold an art reference book library of donated books for all to use. There is always a hot drink & biscuits available.
In the last few months we have seen the quality of life for many local people diminishing rapidly. We are now a donations collection point for the Rhondda Foodbank. We have seen a huge increase in the demand for the photocopying of evidence for benefit applications and appeals, and things like sick notes and time sheets for jobs where they are required for payment but they are not supplied by the employer.
People have come into the gallery for food & we’ve had people without shoes come into the gallery.”
It is in this context that the Workers holds an Annual Open Exhibition.
I submitted the image below as it contains many of the elements that have come to define my current project.
In the previous post, I described the image as,
Broken, useless railings, sticking up from a grubby street, protecting a faceless, brutalist work shed with the least possible hint of colour or decoration that only serves to emphasise the monotone; people traced only by their detritus and razor wire keeping the viewer out and the sky out of reach. It speaks to an anonymous, in-humane, captive experience of work that no amount of colour or blue sky can brighten.
My submission was accepted and I was asked to submit further images from the project. This resulted in two further images being accepted for inclusion in the Exhibition:
I had the images made into 24”x18” C-prints and framed. I filled in my first ever ‘Artists Contract’ and delivered the prints to the Gallery. The Gallery offered useful advice on pricing and limiting the number of prints that could be made of each image.
This will be my first experience of showing my images in a formal gallery setting, not least because I have always fought shy of the ‘white cube’ and its association with the elitist and exclusive business of the trade in art. The Workers is a different kind of gallery however.
It will be interesting to see what the pictures look like and what I make of them in that context. I’m looking forward to it. Mostly.
STOP PRESS:
I haven’t been able to go to the Gallery since I was knocked off my bike by a car just over a fortnight ago but Gayle has sent the images below of the images in situ.
