Welsh Group Exhibition (original) (raw)

Welsh Voices Project Items - Titles + Descriptions

This is a (large) pdf file giving an overview of the titles and descriptions of all the items collected by the 'Welsh Voices of the Great War Online' project. The aim of this document is to aid researchers in locating the material, which is now shared via the People's Collection portal

A Texture of Tradition: The Significance of "Harmony" in the Welsh Session

2015

Despite a rich musical history and reputation as the “Land of Song,” Wales, with its array of musical traditions, remains largely absent from scholarly musical study. Research regarding Welsh traditional music is relatively limited, particularly in comparison with research regarding traditional music of other areas of the British Isles, and outdated, as few studies have been conducted recently enough to comment on the contemporary revitalization of Welsh language and culture and its effect on Welsh music. Seeking to bridge this gap in Celtic music research, I have studied Welsh traditional instrumental performance repertoire and practice through the medium of Welsh traditional music sessions in and around Cardiff. My findings suggest that, though several elements distinguish the Welsh session from other types of Celtic sessions, the texture of the Welsh session, which incorporates a significant homophonic element, an aspect that is absent from the majority of group instrumental traditions in the British Isles, contributes the most significantly to imbuing Welsh musicians with a sense of continuity with the past. Using Hobsbawm’s concept of invented tradition, I explore a continuum of musical traditions from the medieval bardic order in Wales to the modern Welsh session, identifying trends in the texture of sacred and secular music throughout history, their connection to current trends in Welsh traditional music texture, and the significance of those trends to the musicians of modern Welsh traditional music.

Exhibiting Welshness: Art, Politics and National Identity in Wales 1940-1994

2007

The study aims to analyse the culture of the visual arts in Wales between 1940 and 1994 – a period when the British state took formal responsibility for arts patronage through the Arts Council of Great Britain. Special attention focuses on how exhibitions organised by Welsh representatives of the Arts Council helped define and assert a Welsh sense of national identity, whose interests this served, and what were its wider implications. Following Peter Lord’s idea of an “Aesthetics of Relevance,” the study therefore examines Welsh art in relation to the broader social, political and economic development of the Welsh nation. Using discourse analysis of exhibition files held in the Welsh Arts Council Archive, together with other primary and secondary sources, the study finds that the Welsh Arts Council promoted a British sense of Welshness – conceived first in communal, later in more progressive terms – that served to legitimise and reproduce the British social democratic consensus negotiated between government, capital and labour during the Second World War. At the same time, it marginalised nationalist ideas of Wales. This was achieved not only through the kinds of images shown by the Welsh Arts Council, but also how they were presented to Welsh audiences. In conceptual terms, the Welsh Arts Council can therefore be thought of as a “disciplinary mechanism” which made use of curatorial practices of display to regulate images into discursive formations that permitted, and so naturalised, certain ways of thinking about national identity, while silencing others. In turn, this codification of national culture helped define the social-space of the Welsh nation. On the other hand, audiences often challenged the authorised version of Welsh art through the different knowledges and experiences they brought to a display site. Art is therefore a key discursive space in which consensus on national identity is negotiated and contested. | Praise for Exhibiting Welshness: "For the evolution of Arts Council policy in Wales, see Huw David Jones, 'Exhibiting Welshness: Art, Politics and National Identity in Wales, 1940-1994', unpublished PhD thesis, Swansea University, 2007. I have drawn extensively on the work of Dr Jones for this chapter, and I am greatly indebted to him for his enrichment of my understanding of the period". Peter Lord (2016). The Tradition: A New History of Welsh Art, 1400-1990. Cardigan: Parthian, p.322 [n.28]. (Peter Lord is Wales's leading art historian)