Pause to reflect As Wales continues in its efforts to maintain its identity and culture, this is most evidently witnessed in the struggle to continue the development of the Welsh language. A pause to reflect on all the books I could have read, but were out of reach, and what might have been but for the lofty failures of the grammar school system. Around the world other threatened and fragile languages disappear at a rate of knots, washed away in a global current, with the consequence of human knowledge and understanding lost forever. Forward with a new chapter, ‘education, education, education’- a cargo cult and woolly learning policy of a gown and cap of sackcloth and wood from the tree of learning, available at a price for everyone. There was a time when working class women had skills passed down from their mothers’ mothers. The skill of knitting affordable and durable children’s clothes that could be handed down to siblings for continual use. Considered and handmade, and without sweat- the antithesis of the throwaway ethos, of massed produced goods and of the exploitation of the contemporary global market. The time has come to choose between a sheep wearing a coat from its own fleece or the suggestion of a tropical bird delivered on an exotic hardwood pallet. So we don’t make anything anymore, and the once commonplace action of clocking-in and out that brought security and dignity, can now be accumulated in a glass jar. The onetime given routine of afternoons, days or nights, diminishes as the last punch of the clock proclaims a new global shift. But there is sufficient reason to recognise the celebratory endurance associated with minority cultures, this is epitomized completely by the Welsh language that has been sustained despite its immediate proximity to the world’s most dominant language.
Cargo Cult Education 2012 (Sackcloth, oak, steel)
David Garner was born in Ebbw Vale, South Wales. He studied at Newport and Cardiff College of Art and the Royal College, London. He has exhibited widely throughout the UK and Ireland including the National Museum Cardiff, the Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow and the City Gallery, Leicester. His work has been purchased by the Contemporary Arts Society of Wales and the ‘Richard and Rosemary Wakelin Purchase Award’. He was awarded the ‘Ivor Davies Award’ for work that “conveys the spirit of activism in the struggle for language, culture and politics in Wales.”