Ghosts in Armour by Armin Seltz

“Laying my ghost in metal , The scales of this twin world tread on the double, My half

ghosts in armour hold hard in death’s corridor,

To my man-iron sidle.”

Dylan Thomas

Contents Introduction Preface by Celia Jackson The Riverfront Guide

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Artwork Interior Bare It Happened Here AP 1, 2, 3 “light given” pa ddelweddau ruodd / what images roared Traces Transitory State Steel Spectres 25 Workers Small Objects of Desire “vision up the iron mile“ & “Forged in man’s mineral”

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3Demolition Interactive Portfolio Transient Reflections 12-3-1 Meeting Place Last Breath

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Credits Ghosts Team & Artists Collaborators

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Funders Sponsors

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Punctum Photographic & Thanks

Introduction Ghosts in Armour is an artistic exploration of a space, a time and a declining Welsh industry. Centred on the recent loss of a key industrial site in Newportâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ongoing regeneration, Ghosts offers a timely insight into the importance of place and community

within an industry. Conceived and curated by Janire NĂĄjera and Matt Wright, the show has been developed and produced by the cooperative of freelance photographers, Punctum Photographic.

Intimate Immensity What struck me first on entering the deserted steelworks was the cold: my breath smoked in the air, my bones shrank within flesh covered by several layers of thick clothing. The second was the sheer size of the buildings: I could not see from one end to the other. I scribbled down notes about cavernous bays, enormous machine rooms, vast empty spaces, a vaulted ceiling (comparisons with a cathedral were inescapable). I was reminded of Gaston Bachelard, a philosopher and writer who had a keen awareness of the plasticity of words and exploited this with an almost tangible sense of joy. He describes, in The Poetics of Space, the “intimate immensity”

of natural phenomena such as ancient forests and open seas. This phrase reflected, with unexpected accuracy, the paradoxical nature of buildings that were once noisy, crowded and unspeakably hot, yet now stood empty, silent and cold as a tomb. Bachelard goes on to discuss at length Baudelaire’s use of the word “vast” which, he suggests, “evokes calm, peace and serenity. It expresses a vital, intimate conviction.” Standing in that breathtaking space I felt, indeed, a curious and unexpected sense of peace, entirely at odds with the preposterous sight of collapsing ceilings, shattered windows and contaminated floors, all territories

in the process of reclamation, stealthy or otherwise, by nature’s foot-soldiers. Nobody who entered those buildings could fail to be moved by them, and all of us as artists responded in different ways, using a range of strategies; each response is unique and deeply-felt. However, one of the dangers of site-specific work is the gravitational pull of the autobiographical, described with acuity by Anthony Vidler in his introduction to Warped Space: “the nature of space as the projection of the subject, and thus as a harbinger and repository of all the neuroses and phobias of that subject”.

Well, I am neither neurotic nor phobic, yet my vision for the work remained stubbornly and unassailably personal. Once I had recognised the congruence between the empty buildings and the human body (pathetic fallacy indeed) there was only one way forward. Fortunately, the other artists were less “possessed by death” and - possibly - more disciplined than I; they have addressed an array of issues using lens-based and digital technologies that range from the found image through the portrait to the documentary film and beyond. It is thanks to the determination and vision of the curators, Matt Wright and Janire Nájera, that such an ambitious

and broad-based project remains coherent and unified. I want to make some final comments about the deserted steelworks which, after all, is where all this began. In 1995 Marc Auge, in Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity, wrote of the distinction he perceived between places and non-places. A “place”, for Auge, can be defined as “relational, historical and concerned with identity”, while a space that cannot be defined thus is a “non-place”: the airport and the shopping mall are example he cites. Yet places and non-places, he says, share common ground: “the first

is never completely erased, the second never totally completed: they are like palimpsests on which the scrambled game of identity and relations is ceaselessly rewritten”. I am struck by the dichotomy between the immense, impersonal, man-made spaces of the steelworks and the affection with which it is regarded by the ex-workers involved in Ghosts in Armour. It was neither place nor non-place; not just a workplace but a community; and something of this remained in the icy air, as I shivered over my pinhole camera and listened to the murmurings and whispers of the long-departed workers. Celia Jackson, August 2008

Interior Bare It Happened Here Synopsis & Map AP 1, 2, 3 “light given” pa ddelweddau ruodd / what images roared Traces Last Breath Transitory State 25 Workers Small Objects of Desire Entrance Virtual Whiteheads “vision up the iron mile” & “Forged in man’s minerals” Exit Interactive Portal Steel Spectres Disabled Entrance / Exit 3Demolition Transient Reflections Access to Lower / Upper Gallery Meeting Place 12-3-1

The Riverfront Guide

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Upper Gallery upper gallery

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Lower lowerGallery gallery

Interior Bare Matt Wright giclee print on stretched canvas wrap

The images that comprise Interior Bare present a 360ยบ view of the empty Whiteheads site, thereby offering a unique perspective upon the derelict interior landscape. All is laid bare, all is revealed: or is it? For these are images that, to the uninitiated eye, are profoundly disturbing. They look like photographs, but they bear little

resemblance to the conventional print. They present the viewer with a conundrum: how can the medium of photography, a medium that we are taught to believe reflects the world honestly and objectively, produce results that confound our expectations, and are impossible to interpret with any certainty?

It Happened Here Janire NĂĄjera giclee prints within acrylic sandwich

The Whiteheads site cannot be seen as a sterile place: for many years it was rich with life. It was formed and moulded by man over generations, making it impossible to comprehend its lasting impact now that it lies uninhabited. For this project workers were photographed in the location chosen by them as the most memorable from their time spent within the site. Our attention

is thereby drawn not just to what it is - the place itself, its vast deserted buildings and empty offices â&#x20AC;&#x201C; but to the workersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; complex relationship to it, and to one another. Nothing seems to happen within the images because all has already happened. They exist as journeys to spaces in between, unknown to us whilst simultaneously vague and uncertain to their protagonists.

AP 1, 2, 3 Martyn Webb MDF, tin plate & print

Print in all its manifestations is central to our culture. As a means of communication it has outlived its relevance purely as a news and information carrier: print has now become a means of creating art. My engagement with the materials is intuitive. The three sections of work represent the floor, the roof and the

space between, thereby forming a map of the structure. The people, the ghosts and time, are also represented by the use of items left behind in the factory. The objects and images taken from the site had a previous history; when they are translated into print they become iconic and now represent the steel works in their own right.

“light given” Celia Jackson silver gelatin prints, paper, graphite

These images were captured by the primitive technology of the pinhole camera but, through the curiously reductive process that sometimes characterises pinhole photography, their referents have been simplified almost out of recognition. The abandoned space was a wilderness, clutter and detritus everywhere, disorderly fungi and ferns impertinently colonising floors, the air

thick with murmurings and whispers. Somehow the camera has effaced that noisy, incessant commentary to leave an impression of calm: light falls through windows as gently and silently as snow, melting seamlessly into smooth, thick, velvety blackness (“crow-black, sloe-black, slow, black,” as Dylan Thomas wrote in Under Milk Wood).

23 Why is light given to a man whose way is hid, and whom God hath hedged in? 24 For my sighing cometh before I eat, and my roarings are poured out on the waters.

pa ddelweddau ruodd / what images roared Siân Melangell Dafydd poetry installation: paint, recovered locker, found Items.

Human beings are apocalyptic creatures. We live with the idea of the end. Post-war fiction was dominated by one kind of apocalyptic nightmare – nuclear annihilation; whereas our fears are now shifting towards other potential causes of blanket destruction (I’ll let you make your own list). Artist, writer

or dreamer: our imaginations are open to it. This is fascination, not attraction. Whiteheads provided a stage; there was something of the Mary Celeste there, for me, which was compelling material. I will be adding further poetic responses to the curated exhibition.

Flora and fauna curse One man’s last message was: the end is nigh. Another: Beckham is queer. They used paint. And the last man out peed against a wall before leaving. But he didn’t think it through, didn’t drink enough tea – maybe that was it. He spelled half of what he had to say and… well, he petered out. But by the time the clocks hit zero, the stale air burst cheeks of mould out of sodden walls, and even oil grew dusty, a crack in the roof appeared. Then light. And slowly, a green ‘F’. First moss, then foliage, cracking the concrete floor and up the tiles. There it was: Fierce. Sunshine and urine. Life. *am enghraifft o’r gwaith Cymraeg / for an example of the Welsh work: ‘Taliesin’ cyfrol 134

Traces Matt Wright giclee prints within acrylic sandwich

Traces explores the constant yet ephemeral play of light within the abandoned site. When capturing these images I was drawn to places where the light was at its richest, appearing to penetrate and invade the darkness massed within the siteâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s hulking walls. Once the sounds were deafening and the buildings full of life; these

enigmatic pictures, by contrast, reveal a deserted space where only nature and light interact within the detritus of the past and the silence of the present. This is a view of Whiteheads that might surprise even the longest-serving Corus employee, offering an entirely new interpretation of a familiar working environment.

Transitory State Tim Lawrence digital prints on 0.8mm sheet steel

My response to the site was to attempt to capture the loss of an important industry and the vacuum that its absence leaves in the city. The images have all been printed onto sheet steel, which will corrode, decay and rust much like the derelict site. The substrate

also acts as a metaphor for the greater impact that the Whiteheads closure has had on the city and its inhabitants, who were so reliant on the site for jobs, housing and amenities built and kept up by the Whiteheads factory.

Steel Spectres Janire NĂĄjera & Matt Wright lightboxes

These lightboxes comprise the documentation of a series of sitespecific projections created within the site prior to its demolition. Taking found imagery sourced and originating from inside the disused Whiteheads building, we reintroduced a record of times gone

by, in the form of these fleeting, transient projections, into the cavernous spaces of their creation. The startling results confront the viewer with questions regarding our memory of a space and an environmentâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s place within our memory.

25 Workers Clare Skidmore emulsion and found material on canvas (working from original photographs by Janire Nรกjera)

My work is based on the concepts of routine, repetition and the patterns that surround us within our everyday lives. I further reinforce these notions by means of the methods I use to create my paintings. For Ghosts in Armour I have used materials found at the site mixed

with the paint on my canvases, so the structure itself is preserved within the image. The results represent the routines and patterns of the industry and its business, the workers and their day-to-day lives, the building and its structures, all of which will be concealed forever within the paintings.

Small Objects of Desire Jay Dyer, Chris George, Janire Nรกjera and Matt Wright installation incorporating giclee prints within acrylic sandwich & found objects

This collaborative installation is composed of two key elements. Within the glass cases (reminiscent of the vitrines in a museum) are displayed small items, relating either to the factory or to the long-departed workers, that were collected, labelled, photographed and map-referenced by George. These found objects are thus presented as an archaeological record of the final remains of

the multiple human presences to which the site offered a temporary home. Nรกjera, Wright and Dyer made a selection of diptychs contrasting human traces found (and photographed) within the factory with studio images of the same objects. The items are thus transformed from detritus to artefacts through the meticulous processes of cataloguing and display.

“vision up the iron mile” & “Forged in man’s mineral” Richard Crandon video installation and documentary film

“vision up the iron mile” is an audiovisual installation exploring the Whiteheads plant. High-definition cinematography, fused with music and recorded interviews with exworkers, provides an intense visual experience that allows the audience to journey deeper into the history surrounding the steelworks.

“Forged in man’s mineral” is a documentary film that responds to the remnants of heritage and work excavated from the debris of the present. Long-serving employees of Whiteheads return to the ruined site to share their memories of work, friendship and loss.

3Demolition Kris Webster, David Daniel and Matt Wright digital projection, 3D glasses Using a pair of digital cameras a series of images were captured during the demolition of the Whiteheads buildings. These images were combined and are now displayed as 3 dimensional projections, in order to further extend the visual experience and place the viewer in a more intimate relationship with the spaces portrayed.

Interactive Portal Gordon Everett and David Daniel digital portfolio table with multi-touch interface The Interactive Portal offers a unique interface for the exploration of the Ghosts in Armour works, alongside the spaces which inspired them. Its multi-touch surface physically unites the audience with the work, offering a tactile and many-layered experience in which new dimensions of the project may be revealed by the hand of the viewer.

Transient Reflections ‘WrightGeorge’ (Matt Wright and Chris George) 2m diameter photosphere, 147cl helium, fishing line, 7lb weight

Transient Reflections addresses the relationship between a specific space and period of time. We created a photosphere from a series of 360º high dynamic range digital images, solvent-printed onto polyester/nylon and covering a latex balloon. By floating the photosphere in the exact point of its own creation for a period of one working week, we wished to question photography’s reputation

and capacity as a recording device; also, to foreground the dynamic between the past viewpoint of the sphere’s exterior and that of the current perspective of the environment’s interior. The display of the sphere for the length of one working week was a deliberately symbolic reflection on the site’s past industrial heritage before demolition alters it radically and irrevocably.

12-3-1 Linzie Elliott assorted found fabrics, stitch

12-3-1 is a creative reaction to the disused and forgotten work-torn garments of the steelworkers. The dress consists of twelve Corus work jackets, three fluorescent yellow waistcoats and one jumpsuit. I wanted to build, twist and sculpt the fabrics into a design that challenged their original meaning, revealing the potential of their aesthetic beauty and altering their purpose into that of art.

Meeting Place Sally Grant sheepskin and pigment

I have taken a traditional, indigenous and ancient protective material, sheepskin, and imbued it with images of women and children, ‘taken’ from archives that document, perhaps incidentally, that aspect of communities that surrounded the Whiteheads’ works. The jacket encapsulates the protective qualities of an ancient, intrinsically Welsh material, whilst using contemporary imagery to reference the post-industrial monoliths of Newport on the sheepskin’s surface.

Last Breath Terry Anderson & Kieron Kinsey C-type prints within acrylic sandwich

Terry and Kieron were the last employees to leave the Whiteheads site. Their unique knowledge of the site and whole-hearted support of Ghosts have been instrumental in the realisation and success of the entire project. We felt it was important that, as they stood as final custodians of

Whiteheads, we should enable them to record their own view of the demolition. They have photographed the last breaths of a site that has been irrevocably woven into the history of Newport and its people, and for them has been a constant for the past forty years.

Credits

Artists

Curatorial Team Janire Nájera Matt Wright

Terry Anderson Richard Crandon Siân Melangell Dafydd Jay Dyer Linzie Elliott Chris George Sally Grant Celia Jackson Kieron Kinsey Tim Lawrence Janire Nájera Clare Skidmore Martyn Webb Kris Webster Matt Wright

Logistics Jay Dyer Chris George Educational Support Danielle Taylor Marketing Siân Melangell Dafydd

Collaboration Reaction Faction

Gordon Everett & David Daniel Working in an almost symbiotic relationship with the Ghosts in Armour team and the artists, Reaction Faction have allowed Ghosts to transcend the physical and move into the virtual world. With accessibility to all a key principle of Ghosts in Armour, Everett and Daniel’s tireless efforts and innovative thinking have extended and evolved the experience of the exhibition, the space and the art. Reaction Faction’s principal work for exhibition is a custom made, multi-user touch screen display, designed as a physical link to additional digital and online works,

as well as the main virtual tour which enables all who enter it the chance to explore the manifold interiors, saturated with history, of the Whiteheads steelworks.

Rich Chitty Design Rich Chitty

Chitty has been instrumental in the brand development and graphic direction of the Ghosts in Armour project. As director and designer of all print material, it is his talents that give Ghosts such a strong and unique identity.

Seltzdesign Armin Seltz

Seltz has been responsible for web design and development as well

as for assisting many of the artists and producing our 3D gallery. Using his multi-disciplinary approach to developing creative solutions, Seltz has played an integral role in ensuring the show’s accessibility over the web.

Sweaty Pheasant Graham Ritchings

Producing under the name Sweaty Pheasant, Ritchings has created a score of original compositions as a direct audio response to the site and project. Working closely with the Ghosts team and main artists, he has created soundscapes that nurture and enhance the viewer’s experience of the art in both the virtual and physical realms.

Funders