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Blaenau Gwent REACH Collage

Updated Wednesday, 7 July 2021

The individual tiles that make up this collage constitute an impressive outpouring of creative effort. There are 36 tiles in total, from 19 individual artists. The materials they use range from tissue paper, fabric, buttons and Scrabble letters, through photographs and clippings, to paint, pencil and charcoal.

The artists themselves include participants in workshops held in Aberbeeg, residents of Llys Glyncoed extra care scheme, and young people who completed their tiles in lockdown during the Covid 19 pandemic of 2020 and 2021. The tiles are hugely diverse in what they depict. We have buildings of various kinds, gardens, woods and fields, seascapes and skyscapes and sunrises, and a range of animals. All of these in different ways represent their creators’ experiences of living in Blaenau Gwent.



The theme that emerges most obviously from the tiles is the beauty of the area, its natural heritage. Woods and fields are a repeated feature in many of them. The image of a hillside rising up to meet the sky is another recurring motif. A sense of how existence in the Gwent Valleys is shaped by topography comes through strongly. Life is lived in narrow green valleys between arching peaks; several of the tiles include terraced miners’ cottages nestled on steep hillsides. The images that include sheep, horses and birds emphasise rurality and an affinity with nature. The appearance of several dogs, meanwhile, suggests that dog-walking is one of the main ways in which some of these artists enjoy the beauty of the area.

Blaenau Gwent is often associated with coal and steel and, more recently, with the devastating decline of those industries. In a sense these tiles are a riposte to that view, emphasising the return of nature rather than the destructive social and economic consequences of deindustrialisation. Nonetheless, the region’s industrial past is directly referenced in several tiles, not least in the form of several viaducts. One tile features what looks like Cwmtillery pithead. Another depicts the Six Bells Guardian, a towering sculpture commemorating those who died in a mining disaster in 1960. A third features a church that looks a lot like Christchurch in Aberbeeg, built to serve the miners of the Six Bells Colliery. A fourth presents a strikingly blackened landscape with clippings of miners in the foreground. And a fifth tile juxtaposes the ingenuity of industry against the decline of the 1980s, telegraphing its message with a headline that starkly reads ‘the bitter price of coal’.

Arranged together, with the earthier tiles towards the bottom and the airier ones above, the collective impact of all this art is striking. Whilst the impact of coal comes through strongly here and there, the over-riding message is of pride and pleasure in the present-day beauty and character of Blaenau Gwent. To the people who live there, the area is not as trapped in the debilitating legacy of a lost industrial yesteryear as is often assumed.


BG REACH exhibition logo / Logo arddangosfa BG REACH

This page is part of the Blaenau Gwent REACH online exhibition.

Film and audio | Creative writing | Visual art

Digital stories | The history of Blaenau Gwent | About this project

 

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