After receiving 25,000 visitors in Venice, Sean Edwards’ solo show for Wales in Venice 2019, Undo Things Done tours to Wrexham and Liverpool with a new Cardiff date added by invitation of the National Assembly for Wales.
 

  • Undo Things Done exhibition tour - opening Tŷ Pawb - Wrexham Friday 28 February 2020. Exhibition runs until Sunday 26 April 2020.
  • Undo Things Done exhibition tour – Senedd, National Assembly for Wales - Sunday 26 July - 09 September 2020.
  • Undo Things Done exhibition tour - opening Bluecoat, Liverpool Friday 6
  • November 2020. Exhibition runs until Sunday 14 March 2021.
     

Cymru yn Fenis Wales in Venice 2019 and Tŷ Pawb, Wrexham are delighted to announce the official tour dates for Sean Edwards’ solo exhibition Undo Things Done.

A poetic inquiry into place, politics and class, intertwined with personal histories, this official Collateral presentation was commissioned by Arts Council of Wales on the occasion of the 58th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia with lead partner Tŷ Pawb, Wrexham and guest curator Marie-Anne McQuay. The exhibition will be adapted by the artist for the following venues: Tŷ Pawb, Wrexham, project partner Bluecoat, Liverpool with a newly announced summer 2020 presentation at the Senedd, Cardiff.


The Cymru yn Fenis Wales in Venice 2019 exhibition will open first at Lead Organisation Tŷ Pawb, Wrexham 28 February 2020. Undo Things Done takes as its starting point Edwards' experience of growing up on a council estate in Cardiff in the 1980s, capturing and translating what he calls a condition of 'not expecting much' into a shared visual language; one that evokes a way of living familiar to a great number of people. As part of the presentation in Wrexham which includes Welsh quilts, prints, sculpture and film, the artist is reworking Refrain, 2019.

Refrain is a radio play written for the artist’s mother co-produced by National Theatre Wales performed by the artist’s mother Lily Edwards. This radio play, which was at the heart of the Venice exhibition, was performed live daily during the Biennale, streamed from her flat in Cardiff to the Cymru yn Fenis Wales in Venice 2019 venue Santa Maria Ausiliatrice, Castello. Refrain weaves Lily Edwards’ biography, growing up in a Northern Irish Catholic Children’s Home and her subsequent life in Wales, with found materials and Sean Edwards’ memories from childhood. Edwards will adapt the specially commissioned version of Refrain produced by John Norton and Martin Williams which was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on 17 December 2019.

Edwards’ presentation Undo Things Done in Venice received 25,000 visitors during the run of La Biennale di Venezia however, along with a number of other official presentations, drew to an early close due to unprecedented flooding across the city. The floods affected a significant steel and wood work in parallel with the past i-iv, 2019 which has been removed from the tour with new works instead added by the artist as the tour progresses. As an artist who always adapts every exhibition to its new context these changes have been absorbed into Edwards own working process.


After Tŷ Pawb, Wrexham, the exhibition moves on in summer to the Senedd, home of the National Assembly for Wales, Cardiff, a new venue for the tour with the work returning to the city where it was made and where Edwards lives. The tour then concludes in November 2020 at Cymru yn Fenis Wales in Venice 2019 project partner Bluecoat, Liverpool where Edwards will create a further iteration of Undo Things Done spanning Bluecoat’s four gallery spaces. In this presentation, the artist will interweave new and older works that resonate with the same sense of autobiography in Undo Things Done, including his 2011 single channel video, Maelfa which was shot in a 1970s shopping centre on the Llanedeyrn estate where Edwards grew up.

Edwards’ emotionally resonant body of work for Undo Things Done - film, sculptures, prints and Welsh quilts - will expand and develop with the tour. Known for his sculptural approach to the everyday, Edwards often begins with seemingly unrelated elements linked by autobiographical and cultural connections. Through investigative processes including time spent in local archives, museums and libraries, he gathers together images, stories, quotes, and clips. It is in the teasing out of these things in the studio, in isolating, abstracting, and bringing them together, that their political and formal resonance comes into play.