Interview with Richard Frame

Rebecca met with Richard Frame this week; Richard was a contemporary of Dave Stephens at Cardiff College of Art and collaborated with him on several conceptual pieces during his Foundation Year.  He was also a member of the 'Myself and Others' group run by John Gingell and Di Setch. 

Richard later went to study at Newport College of Art where he continued to use performance and conceptual ideas within his work - with some of his fellow students, he formed a group called The Gay Dogs, notable because none of them could play their instruments or sing - this was in 1973.  He also performed as part of the Portsmouth Sinfonia in Newport and at the Royal Albert Hall in London.

Interview with Marty St James



Marty St James on 'Mr & Mrs', HTV (1977) Image courtesy of Marty St James


  We interviewed Marty St James, Professor of Fine Art at the University of Hertfordshire and former student of Cardiff College of Art at his London studio this week. Marty has been making performance work since his late teens, working with Ian Hinchliffe, Rob Con, Roland Miller and Shirley Cameron amongst many others.


At Cardiff, he made a number of pieces for the symposium that John Gingell ran in the Reardon Smith auditorium, and made an appearance on the HTV show 'Mr and Mrs' as part of his final year show. After graduating, he continued to produce conceptual and performance pieces around Wales, including his 'Morris 1000 Dancing' which visited a number of towns and villages, and 'I'll See You' which he presented at several art centres.


We would like to thank Marty for allowing us to interview him, and also for his help in identifying some of the images of his work that we have found in different archives.

The Gingell archive - continued

In the past week, we've finished working through John Gingell's archive, collecting the final few photos and scans of documents and also going through a huge number of negatives of performances, mainly from the early 1970s. Now, Rebecca is going to begin contacting Zoo Group members to arrange a reunion. If you were a member of the Zoo Group and you'd like to be a part of this, please get in touch.

We have also been given a TV documentary from 1975 on Llanover Hall, which includes some wonderful footage of John Gingell building his tower beside the hall, and talking about the ideas behind it. The tower was unfortunately pulled down and replaced by a car park. The picture here shows Mike Pearson marking where the original tower stood, long gone, but not forgotten.

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