Author: Andrew Green
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Cribarth
It’s the morning of the Pumpkinification of Donald Trump. Three of us have fled the bloggers, tweeters and trolls, to the head of Cwm Tawe. We park in Ystradgynlais, near Ysgol Golwg y Cwm, and walk up to the track of the old Swansea Vale Railway. This and the Brecon and Neath Railway it connects with…
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Henri Gaudier-Brzeska and Ezra Pound
It’s exactly a hundred years since John Lane published Ezra Pound’s ‘memoir’ of the French sculptor Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, who died in action at Neuville-Saint-Vaast on the Western Front on 5 June 1915, aged 23 years. I first came across Gaudier-Brzeska and his work as a student in the early 1970s. I’d got into the habit…
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Charles William Mansel Lewis, painter
Last week I paid a visit to Parc Howard Museum and Art Gallery in Llanelli. I was on a particular mission in the museum, but had time to look round the paintings on display. The collection is mixed but interesting. It includes an early view of Llanelli from Furnace Quarry by the town’s most famous…
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Y £5 newydd: ymlaen i’r gorffennol
Yr wythnos ddiwethaf cyrhaeddodd fy mhapur pum punt newydd cyntaf. Ychydig ddyddiau cyn hynny derbyniais i trwy’r post The new Fiver, taflen (uniaith Saesneg – er bod fersiwn Cymraeg ar gael) gan Fanc Lloegr sy’n ceisio esbonio’r newid a rhoi cysur i’r cyhoedd. Rhaid imi gyfaddef, yn anaml iawn y byddwn i’n aros am eiliad…
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The new Glynn Vivian: Day 1
For five years the façade of the Glynn Vivian Art Gallery has been hidden by tall wooden hoardings. A week or two ago the screens came down, and yesterday, at last, the ‘new’ Glynn Viv opened its doors to the public. In the morning a long parade of people walked through the city centre to…
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Peter Lord’s ‘The Tradition’
In front of me is a copy of The artist in Wales, the first book to attempt a full conspectus of art in Wales, past and present. It was written in 1957 by David Bell, when he was Curator of the Glynn Vivian Art Gallery. It’s a drab volume, even taking into account the austere…
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An archaeological nightmare
In my experience – and I confess I haven’t lifted a trowel in anger for over forty years – archaeological digs bring nothing but lasting pleasure. For some, though, it’s obviously a different story. Quite recently a friend alerted me to the writings of Sarah Moss. Her speciality, in fiction and in books of travel,…
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New paintings by Carys Evans
In the Ceri Richards Gallery is a collection of around 40 paintings by Carys Evans – her first solo exhibition since graduating in fine art in Swansea in 2013. The pictures are varied in size and in medium, but all of them share Carys’s persistent themes: female figures in domestic settings; birds, cats and other…
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Ymchwil fel celfyddyd peryglus: ‘Cai’ gan Eurig Salisbury
Ei nofel gyntaf yw Cai (Gwasg Gomer, 2016) gan y bardd a’r ymchwilydd Eurig Salisbury. Enillodd hi Fedal Rhyddiaith Eisteddfod Genedlaethol Y Fenni eleni, ond dyw’r beirniaid, na’r adolygwyr wedyn, mae’n ymddangos, yn gallu cytuno ar y rhesymau pam. Myfyriwr ôl-raddedig ym Mhrifysgol Aberystwyth yw Cai. Mae’n cael trafferth ffindio ffordd ymlaen i’w ymchwil ym…
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Generosity of a bookseller
In Swansea institutions don’t get more crustily venerable than the Royal Institution of South Wales. But people too can grow into institutions. Jeff Towns, the first speaker in the RISW’s new season of talks, can’t deny that he too is a Swansea fixture. True, he doesn’t go as far back as 1835, but since he…