Dyddiau Du/Dark Days

For the 53rd International Art Exhibition, John Cale will present a new, specially commissioned audio-visual installation from Wales, curated by Bruce Haines. The installation, visible from June 3rd to November 22nd, will be situated within Capannone 1 at the Ex-Birreria, a former brewery building on the traditional workers' island of Giudecca.

Wales provides an astonishingly rich lyrical and romantic, as well as political and social, context for artists to work within. This project resonates with the poetic, bardic tradition that underpins the cultural history of Wales, and has at its heart Cale's own personal relationship with the Welsh language and issues surrounding communication.

Known for his exploration of the physiognomy of sound, Cale undertook a series of cathartic physical performances in Wales to create work that draws upon his lifelong concerns with the passing of time, the durational and the multidisciplinary nature of presentation. It is work that is both of Wales' landscape and the rich history of performance art the country has played host to since the mid 20th-century.

Cale continues to reflect on duration as a concept, blurring the boundaries of music, film, performance and visual art. His writing and music has always resounded with the bleakness and solemnity of the Welsh landscape, as well as the rich tradition of Welsh language strict metre poetry. Perhaps Cale is a ‘bard’ himself in the widest sense of the word; as a published poet, initially in Aspen magazine during the late sixties, he acknowledges the influence of Welsh poet Dylan Thomas in the troubled souls of his protagonists inhabiting landscapes ruled by tyranny, war and compromise, subject matter prescient today.

Dyddiau Du/Dark Days is produced and managed by the Arts Council of Wales with support from the Welsh Assembly Government, British Council, Wales Arts International and with coordination in Venice by Nuova Icona.