Wild and Scattered
scorched blanket - 7 pieces 50 x 70cms

Tim Davies

In the last few years I have been interested in working with image, text and material, utilising both English (my mother tongue) and Welsh (my mother's and father's tongue). The scorched texts on woollen blankets remain vulnerable, echoing the uncertainty and fragility of language and its inherent cultural codes. Welsh words are often mocked in respectable British broadsheets, maligned because of their lack of vowels. In fact Welsh has seven vowels, with y and w in addition to a, e, i, o, u which are of course also present in English. This ridicule has drawn me to the Welsh vowels, evoking a series as sequences, semiotic denotations. The pieces shown at Harlech are the third series, the previous two being more formal and rigid in composition. This series is wild and scattered, allowing a freer rein, like language mutating over time.

Nac uffern na neffoedd is from a bilingual series juxtaposing conceptual and linguistic polarities, referencing a state of ambiguity and not knowing.