Jon Pountney – Beachcombing
17th August - 30th September 2017
Jon Pountney is an artist living in Treforest, South Wales. His work touches on themes of history, nostalgia, senses of community, narrative, and more recently the complex ideas of industrial 'heritage'.
Primarily a 2D artist, he uses photography, painting, drawing and film, building up suites of work; some projects are put together over several years. In this way he has been documenting Cardiff's Splott Foreshore for the past three summers.
An unloved and little documented beach (Cardiff's only beach!) the foreshore is made up of landfill, rubble, bricks, coal, and the slag waste of steel manufacture.
Over many years in the 50's, 60's and 70's, it was used as a dumping ground for many buildings in Cardiff, including the slum clearance of the Portmanmoor area of Splott, the massive Eastmoors steel works, and (if you believe the rumours) the beautiful victorian Queen St Station.
An austere, lonely, but ultimately beautiful vista is explored here in photography, still lives created from found objects, and a short film.