Following the journey of Merthyr born and raised artist, Gwenllian Davenport, to a hidden landscape, the video navigates a collage of imagery and soundscapes where unblended surroundings become re-blended landscapes.
As an exploration into the reconnection with our local environments, which has become apparent for so many throughout the pandemic, Gwenllian utilises an archive of her own imagery and audio recordings collected whilst on daily lockdown walks, in Merthyr Tydfil. Sounds are merged and overlapped, just as imagery is cut and pasted. Hills become like clay, slopes are moulded soft and ground noticeably rough. The components are bound together with the overheard voice of the artist, who narrates her journey to ‘The Chwarel’. Slipping between both English and Welsh, Gwenllian utilises the spoken word to enhance the materialistic qualities of her local landscape and flesh out descriptive imagery of the textural surroundings.
Accompanied by a rust coloured map, Gwenllian encourages the audience to apply similar scrutinies to their local environment, “to collect imagery and sounds which distinctly indicate your own environment, and piece them back together to reform this new landscape”.
Click here to view the Our Creative Place Storymap and to learn more about the project