URDD Eisteddfod

The Welsh National Urdd Eisteddfod approached 3eyes, through Fusion (UWN), to design and install an exhibition space within the grounds of Cardiff Castle. The purpose of this exhibition was to display the artwork of several hundred children as part of the National Urdd Eisteddfod festival project.

We wanted our project to be markedly different from previous designs for the space, (mazelike confines constructed from two and a half meter, solid wall sections). Our key aims were to create both a sense of space, and a sense of community. The floor space for the exhibition was 20m x 25m, with two-meter high walls. The displayed artwork consisted of over one hundred and fifty pictures and photographs, and over one hundred models. Across this space, approximately four meters from the ground, we stretched a web of self-tensioning, white shock-cord; forming a horizontal plane of intersecting lines, parallel to the floor. From this plane we suspended several translucent, white fabric membranes.

By selecting various anchor points for these membranes, we were able to stretch and contort their shape into dynamic, organic forms.

In front of these membranes we suspended the two-dimensional work; mounted on sheets of clear acrylic. The membranes are so transparent that one has a clear impression of that which they partially obscure. As ones view shifts the membranes over-lap; altering their perceived translucency. This translucency has many functions:

• It maintains an aesthetic sense of space for the exhibition participants, also helping them to orient and maneuver themselves.
• It implies the (prerequisite) separation of specific areas of the exhibition, but does not rigorously enforce them: as it does not block vision.
• It reinforces the presence of an exhibition community by allowing all other members to be seen by any one member.
• It maintains a certain degree of privacy between individuals; people can be facing each other, viewing suspended work, yet the presence of a separating membrane provides a physical/metaphysical barrier between the viewers; they can suspend acknowledgement of one another if they wish.

The three dimensional work was supported on a number of white, 1m cubes, interspersed amongst the membranes.

The centre of the exhibition was an enclosure dedicated to a digital imaging workshop, managed by ffotogallery. All of the childrens work, including that which it was not possible to physically display, was shown sequentially as a loop of digital images; data projected onto several of the membranes.