Interview with Dave Stephens

We travelled down to Brighton this week to meet with Dave Stephens at his home.  Dave is originally from Cardiff, and studied for his Art Foundation at Cardiff College of Art before moving to Leeds College of Art for his degree.

At art college Dave began performing monologues on different subjects; sometimes confessional, sometimes provocative, he went on to tour the UK, Europe and North America.  His final show was at the Central School of Art in 1985 and he has not performed since.

We would like to thank Dave for his generosity and hospitality, and for talking to us about his performance career.  Also, we'd like to thank Matt Page for filming the interview for us.

Group Interview 3 - Former Cardiff College of Art students

This week we met with four former students from Cardiff College of Art, as Cardiff School of Art & Design was then known. We were fortunate to be allowed to hold the interview at UWIC's Howard Gardens campus, where they had studied during the late 1960s and 1970s with (amongst others) Tom Hudson and John Gingell. A tour of the building prompted lots of memories from their student days.

 

We would like to thank Prof André Stitt, Debbie Savage and Nicola Brown for their help in arranging for us to use Howard Gardens. We'd also like to thank our interviewees, Colin Ainsworth, Tim Diggles, Suzy Peters and Mike Shaw, for travelling to Cardiff, lending us material from their personal archives, and for their memories and stories.

Interview with Glyn Jones

Glyn Jones was the Head of the School of Fine Art at Cardiff College of Art between 1972 and 1999.  Born in the Rhondda, he studied at Cardiff in the 1950s, before going to the Slade School of Fine Art in London.  Glyn has exhibited widely and is a member of the 56 Group.

We spoke to him about his career as a teacher and artist, and also about the development of Cardiff College of Art and of performance art in the college with the establishment of the so-called "Third Area" and later the "Space Workshop". 

If you were a student during this period, we would love to hear from you; please email mail@performance-wales.org

We'd like to thank Glyn for his support, and for sharing his memories with us.

Anti-bodies/Zoo Reunion

We are continuing the work on John Gingell's archive and this week interviewed three of his collaborators from the early 1970s.  John Danvers, Charles Garrad and Ken Hickman were all members of the Zoo Group, an artists' cooperative co-founded by Gingell in the early 1970s. 

John, Charles and Ken travelled down to Cardiff, to John Gingell's former home, to meet with us.  Along with talking about the Zoo Group work, Charles and John were students at Cardiff College of Art during the time that 'Alternative Studies' was being established, which went on to become the Third Area/Space Workshop.

The three were also members of the group 'Anti-bodies', which produced work around Europe in the early 1970s.

The interview summary will be available online on our website at some point soon.

We'd like to thank John, Charles and Ken, and also the Gingell family for their time and support and for contributing to the research.

Next, we hope to meet with more former students from Cardiff who were involved in performance work during this time.  If you would like more information about this, please email us at mail@performance-wales.org

John Gingell's collection of papers and documents

We've been working on John Gingell's archive in Cardiff.  Gingell taught at Cardiff College of Art (now Cardiff School of Art and Design) from the mid-1960s. He co-founded the 'Space Workshop' or 'Third Area' at the College, from which many performance and time-based artists emerged over the years. He was also a member of the Zoo Group, which created collaborative performance events in the early 1970s.

The archive is fascinating, with hundreds of photos of performances, along with scripts, notes, cast lists and the odd prop.  We hope to add all of this into our database soon and then post it on the website.

If you were one of John Gingell's students, or part of the Zoo Group, then we'd love to hear from you.  Please email mail@performance-wales.org