Cartographic Imaginaries: Interpreting the Literary Atlas of Wales

Cartographic Imaginaries: Interpreting the Literary Atlas of Wales

9 February – 27 March 2019

Cartographic Imaginaries presents an inspiring collection of commissioned artwork in response to twelve English language novels set in Wales. These form part of the wider Literary Atlas of Wales project, which investigates how books and maps help us understand the spatial nature of the human condition. More specifically it explores how English language novels set in Wales contribute to our understanding of the real-and-imagined nature of the country, its history, and its communities.

In the commission brief, artists were invited to “play with traditional notions of cartographic mapping, and to explore the possibilities of visually communicating the relations between ‘page’ and ‘place’, as well as ‘books’ and ‘maps’.”

Through diverse approaches, each work proves that just as there is no single way to read a book or to know a place; each creates and inhabits its own unique ‘cartographic imaginary’. Yet together, the works embrace multiple voices that speak of the richness of writing, thinking, and inhabiting “real-and-imagined” Wales.

The Literary Atlas of Wales project is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council.

www.literaryatlas.wales

Artist Novel

John Abell: Revenant by Tristan Hughes (2008)

Iwan Bala: Twenty Thousand Saints by Fflur Dafydd (2008)

Valerie Coffin Price: Price The Rebecca Rioter by Amy Dillwyn (1880)

Liz Lake: Shifts by Christopher Meredith (1988)

Richard Monahan: Aberystwyth Mon Amour by Malcom Pryce (2009)

George Sfougaras: The Hiding Place by Trezza Azzopardi (2000)

Joni Smith: Mr Vogel by Lloyd Jones (2004)

Amy Sterly: Pigeon by Alys Conran (2016)

Locus: Sheepshagger by Niall Griffiths (2002)

Rhian Thomas: Border Country by Raymond Williams (1960)

Seán Vicary: The Owl Service by Alan Garner (1967)

Cardiff University Student Project Strike for a Kingdom by Menna Gallie (1959