“Picture the Others” is Angharad Williams’ first solo presentation in Wales and first institutional exhibition comprising new work which includes a series of large-scale paintings, glass sculptures and film composed within a site responsive installation. As both an artist and writer from Ynys Môn (Anglesey), Wales, Williams’ practice spans a decade, spent between the UK, the Netherlands and Germany.
“Picture the Others” is an introspective search and subsequently a process of connecting to the outside. It is also a call for imagination when we choose to leave home, to hesitation when we turn back, and to the impulsive decision to go forth. The eyes are a mechanism of exterior projection – a projector itself perhaps – framing what we see and marking these objects of your vision with a light, with a glow, even.
Speaking ahead of the exhibition artist Angharad Williams said: “Our ideas of the ‘Other’ are also informed predominantly by guess work and the hegemonic institutions of history. To picture the others therefore, is to feel and see something familiar. If we return home, we may feel we have become more familiar with the outside world.
The world, however, has ceased to present itself in the old terms. Our experiences of it—our multiple encounters with it— have profoundly changed. We are witnessing the birth of a new form of these subject-object relationships, as well as the emergence of new laws of conceiving space.
We see less and less of what we are given to see, and more and more of what we desperately want to see, even if what we desperately want to see does not correspond to any given reality. Instead we are presented with a cleverly orchestrated and excessively violent political fiction under the guise of all kinds of different but very real wars.”
“Picture the Others” is an unsentimental study of being in the material form of this reality, explored in different yet consistent ways. Using quotidian examples, albeit at times confrontational or out of the ordinary, Williams invites the audience to a direct and immediate observation of oneself by oneself. Through painting, sculpture, installation and film, Williams materialises and warps the habits and preconditions we have all developed to move through the world. Chief among these habits, and central to Williams’ work, is the topic of security – a condition born of the confusion between freedom and its confines.
The demand for an imaginary surplus necessary for everyday life has not only accelerated, it has become irrepressible. This imaginary surplus, or an image of others, which Williams asks us to both produce and face, is not simply a lens through which to understand the self, nor is it a means to become more real, more in line with being and its essence. It is experienced as the actual motor of reality, the very condition of its fullness and glow.
The exhibition connects to a group project presented in MOSTYN’s first floor entitled The Wig which acts as an extension, both physically and conceptually, of Williams’ research interests and collaborative practice.
Presented in MOSTYN’s Gallery 6 is The Wig; an ongoing, accumulative project between Gianmaria Andreetta, Jason Hirata, Laura Langer, Megan Plunkett, Richard Sides and Angharad Williams.
At MOSTYN, Llandudno
until June 12, 2022