N. S. Harsha

A Centre of Art – Swansea 2 The Glynn Vivian Art Gallery

Last week I took a day to walk around some of the art currently showing in Swansea. The city is teeming with it – all sorts both international and local. For many years now the arts scene in Swansea has been good but in recent years it has been growing even stronger. So I will be posting each day this week with a different aspect of the work we enjoyed on our tour from one gallery to the next.

N. S. Harsha

We started at the Glynn Vivian Art Gallery where N. S. Harsha had his largest exhibition in the UK to date. He was winner of the Artes Mundi prize in 2008 and one of the works was an installation made for the Glynn Vivian. The whole exhibition was impressive and the installation was powerful in its use of mirrors – I became one of the people painted on the floor looking up at the mirrored ceiling. It has a strange and disorientating effect.Continue reading

Nature and construction

My Walk this Week – Architecture of An Urban Triangle

My walk this week takes a look at and listen to a small urban triangle in Swansea, South Wales. I had been looked at the patterns of tower block scaffolding on a number of occasions in passing and thought it would be good to find the opportunity to take a closer look. So, duly prepared with my kit on a dry day I set out to explore both the scaffolding and other features of a small area that includes both the Glynn Vivian Art Gallery and on the opposite side of the road, UWTSD Swansea College of Art.

Swansea College of Art

There are three different eras of architectural design in this first stage (or side of the triangle) of my walk – the classical style of the Glynn Vivian and the College of Art, the more functional style of the early ’70s in the Oldway House tower block and the mixture of block and glass in the new entrance  to the Glynn Vivian Art Gallery.Continue reading