Interview with Nigel Rolfe

Nigel Rolfe is an artist based in Dublin, and a visiting tutor at the Royal College of Art.  He has been making performances and video art for over 30 years and in 1977 he was part of a group of international artists invited to take part in the Eisteddfod in Wrexham as part of the Welsh Art Council's programme How the Past Perishes, How the Future Becomes/ Fel y darfuÕr gorffennol - fel y del y dyfodol.  Nigel created a piece called Towers that elicited a somewhat hostile reaction from some quarters of the press.  He was later invited to re-perform the work at Chapter Arts Centre in Cardiff by the curator, David Briars. 

Heike met with Nigel to discuss his work and his memories of the Eisteddfod, and of the performance scene at this time.  For more information about Nigel's work, click on the heading to this blog entry.  Further information can be found on our website - http://www.performance-wales-org/

Interview with Keith Wood

Keith Wood came to Cardiff College of Art in 1966, and began making performances as a student.  Some of these were solo affairs, such as an explosion in the car park during one early experimentation, while others were done in collaboration with other students, including John Danvers. In a number of the interviews, Keith has been named as being very influential on his fellow students and others that he worked with later on.

After leaving college, Keith continued his interest performance, firstly with his own group, the Keith Wood Group, and later with Highway Shoes - Chapter's company in residence - before leaving for the USA, a regular theme in his later work.  For more information on these, please see the database on our website, http://www.performance-wales.org/

Rebecca and Heike met with Keith to talk about his early interest in performance and its development, along with some of his productions, including The Nighthawk which starred Mike Pearson, and The Gospel According To Lenny, about Lenny Bruce. 

Conversation with Janek Alexander

Heike was invited to chair a public conversation today with Janek Alexander, director of Chapter Arts Centre in Cardiff, about his performance work in the 1970s and 1980s. Janek was part of an extraordinarily vibrant and diverse performance scene, which included Cardiff Laboratory Theatre, Pauper's Carnival and Moving Being, all resident at Chapter in the 1970s.
Janek made an extraordinary debut in 1976 with Howard Hughes, a performance described by Mike Pearson as ‘a tour de force’. He went on to create ten more substantial pieces of work in a quest to develop a new form of minimalist "anti-theatre". Previously unseen video footage, rare audio recordings and contributions from former collaborators (Karen McGregor, Karen Lucas, Dave Perry and Paul Turner) and Alexander himself explored this unique body of work and the first decade of experimentation at Chapter.

More information: http://www.chapter.org/20742.html

Sited interview: Mike Pearson at Chapter

Yesterday we travelled to Cardiff to interview Mike Pearson around the Chapter Arts Centre in Cardiff.  This followed on from the series of sited interviews we did with Mike around Cardiff last November that included various spaces within Cardiff University, Llanover Hall and the Sherman Theatre. 

Mike has been involved with Chapter since its inception 40 years ago, and was one of the first people to move into the building and produce work, firstly with Transitions, later with Cardiff Lab.  He also witnessed many performances by a number of artists and groups including Nigel Rolfe, Pip Simmons and Moving Being.

We hope that this will be the first in a series of interviews around Chapter with people.

Thanks to Mike for his recollections and taking us on a tour of the building as he knew it, and to James Tyson and his colleagues at Chapter for making this possible.

Interview with David Briers

David Briers was the Visual Arts Organiser at Chapter Arts Centre in Cardiff between 1976 and 1984, responsible for programming the galleries.  Rebecca went to interview David this week his interest in performance art, and his time at Chapter. 

Among the artists that David invited to the centre was Nigel Rolfe, who had caused outrage in some areas of the press following his 'Towers' performance at the National Eisteddfod at Wrexham in 1977 (or as the Daily Mail put it, 'The Welsh art of paying an Irishman to demolish bricks with his head').

David invited Nigel Rolfe to do a performance of the 'Towers' piece, and also one called 'Treatment of Individual Parts' (see above and right - copyright Steve Benbow).

If you remember seeing this, or any other performance work in Wales during the 1960s and 1970s we would love to hear from you.

Heike and Rebecca would like to thank David Briers for his help with the project.

Interview with Christine Kinsey, co-founder of Chapter Arts Centre

Christine Kinsey, along with Mik Flood and Bryan Jones, founded Chapter in Cardiff over forty years ago.  Chapter has become an important site in Cardiff for the arts, and one of Christine's (many) roles was in programming the gallery spaces, along with renovating the building, working behind the bar, designing publicity, managing the administration and a host of other jobs.

Rebecca has been to interview Christine this week about the founding of Chapter and the early years, the arts scene in Cardiff at the time, and the experimental work that flourished in Chapter.

Thanks to Christine for her time and sharing her memories. A transcript summary will be posted on the project website in the near future.