The Joy Orchestra, Heloise Godfrey-Talbot

Tusday 21 October 2014, 8pm, Milgi Warehouse

We gather in the Milgi warehouse at 8pm on Tuesday 21 October to see Heloise Godfrey-Talbot’s Joy Orchestra, an evening investigating the nature of communication, and aiming to create "dialogues" between people and objects.  Heloise has been exploring human interactions with objects "designed to 'serve' us" for the last year, so in some ways this evening is a showcase of her work. 

We start with a video of Heloise herself, in the National Museum of Wales in Cardiff, strolling around the exhibits and choosing an object to talk to.  In the end she chooses a decorated plate with flowers and fruit – similar to many others in the cabinet. 

“You’d fit right in at my mum’s house”.

The audience often laugh at Heloise’s comments to the plate, and indeed, her approach does feel unusual, and occasionally a little uncomfortable to watch.  But why?  In the next video, we are shown how strong relationships can form between people and objects.  In “Instruments”, a conductor talks about their relationship with their orchestral baton, and a violinist talks about their violin. 

After this, we see three videos featuring three autistic individuals, and the strong relationships they have with objects: a blower, a jigsaw, grass, tree and a chair.  The first time, we watch the video on its own, and then it is repeated, this time in dialogue with a composition.  The composers, Rowan Talbot, Dan-Wyn Jones and Benjamin Talbott, create a kind of conversation between the individuals, their objects, and the music. 

The music really captures the intensity of the connection between person and object - a difficult feat for the composers to accomplish. 

We close with the Sing! vocal group, a mixed choir who take a selection of everyday objects, and interpret them (non-verbally) with their voices.  The results are striking – all “zip!”, “zow!”, hissing and shushing, etc.  Eventually, the audience are invited to join in, interpreting a snorkel – great fun.  

Everyone gets talking after the show - the evening leaves us with a lot to think about.  

For more info on Heloise Godfrey:  www.heloisegodfrey-talbot.com

More info on the Joy Orchestra project: https://www.a-n.co.uk/blogs/the-joy-orchestra-and-how-to-communicate-differently 

For more info on the composers:

Daniel-Wyn Jones -    daniel-wyn.co.uk
Rowan Talbot -    rowanblaketalbot.com

Benjamin Talbott -    benjamintalbott.wordpress.com

For more info on the Sing! vocal group and for info on joining:  facebook.com/groups/singcardiff

Poor Queen, Chalk Outlines – Mab Jones and Johnny Giles – Waterloo Tea, 21st October 2014

Mab and Johnny lay on quite the spread for their listeners at Waterloo Tea, this Tuesday, 21 October, with lashings of wine and nibbles on the tables.  Of course, there is much to celebrate.  This is the Cardiff launch of two excellent poetry collections, with Mab celebrating the release of her first book of poetry, Poor Queen, and Johnny promoting his first pamphlet, Chalk Outlines. 

 

The publication of Poor Queen has been a long time coming, some of the poetry within it being over five years old.  Mab starts with a few of these older works, including “Beautiful Girl”, dedicated to Ogden Nash (and echoing his style), “Cardifference” and “No Maybe Baby”.  “I used to be obsessed with rhyming” Mab says.  It was interesting to hear the progress of the poetry over the years, from the bawdy, politically charged poems of earlier days on the burlesque circuit, into something a little more slower paced, more thoughtful.  She reads “Pulp Fiction”, which she claims she wrote in her sleep, just before last year’s Made in Roath:

Pulp Fiction 

Take your experience
And peel it. Pull back the skin
And drop it to the floor
Like a skirt.

Next, the pulp,
Firm and glistening as a heart.
Crush it.

Finally, find the pips,
As smooth and honest
As bullets. Swallow them,
Like medicine.

Writer, you are ready.

Begin.

Found at: http://mabjones.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/pulp-fiction.html

There are some particularly touching lines in ‘Millionaire’, which Mab has dedicated to Johnny – a poem worlds away from “Cardifference”.  “I love you because you choose millionaire’s shortbread from the cafe counter, and we both know you will never be a millionaire.”  Some of the more intimate lines are also pretty hilarious – as most of Johnny’s family are in the audience.  

At just twenty-one, Johnny’s poems show an astonishing level of maturity, and cover a wide range of subjects – war (“I’ve read too much Wilfred Owen to glorify”), poetry, bankers.  He even covers the Myth of Orpheus, retold with a new protagonist – Jimi Hendrix, of course (“Eurydice, that fair Foxy Lady” – brilliant).

He also explores his battles with addiction and his breakdown last year, which are covered in his poetry with a staggering honesty.  “Good Fox, Bad Fox”, for example, has an Aesop’s fable feel to it – one fox succeeds, the other fails, although both suffer from the same temptation – hinting at the two paths which Johnny’s life could have taken.  Although sometimes cynical, there is a strong morality and heart to this poetry.  All in all, these two make a formidable poetic pairing.

***

Chalk Lines by Johnny Giles is a handmade, limited edition chapbook produced by Blackheath Books, available here: http://www.blackheathbooks.org.uk/8.html

Poor Queen is Mab Jones’ first book, published by Burning Eye Books, and is available on her website, here: http://www.mabjones.com/purchase

More info on Johnny here: www.facebook.com/johnnygilespoet

More info on Mab here: www.mabjones.com

Interview with Georgia Bowles, MiR Workshops Organiser

Last but not least in our interview series, I interviewed Georgia, who was in charge of this year's selection of workshops at Made in Roath! 

What event are you most looking forward to/have enjoyed so far?

Being workshops coordinator I've spent a lot of time during the festival collecting materials and moving artwork around, so the majority of the events I've been to have been my own! So with my biased tunnel vision I would have to say the Paint the Lake was my favourite. We had lovely weather, and even when it was completely packed with visitors it was still a really relaxing and enjoyable space - all made possible by our amazing volunteers Elloise & Meish!

How did you get involved with Made in Roath?

Last year I was an 'oddjobs' volunteer. I helped Helen, one of the organisers, with the organising & transport of workshop materials and making sure workshop events were ready to go on the day. I also assisted the volunteers coordinator when reaching out to the community for volunteers and organised those relating to workshops. So when Helen mentioned that they were thinking of having more coordinators this year I jumped at the chance!

Made in Roath must be a lot of work to organise – what is it that inspires you to keep going?

Being an artist/designer/maker can be quite solitary if your mostly working on solo projects, or if you're not in a communal studio space. So an event like this, that not only brings the artistic community together but also the wider community as a whole is fantastic. 

It's an opportunity to see how the community react to your work, to meet other artists and it helps you to put what you do into the bigger picture of the community. 

So while it was completely exhausting, it always felt like it was worth the effort everyone was putting in.

What do you think makes Made in Roath such a distinctive festival?

The community. Have I used that word enough already? Everyone who gets involved, from running events to attending them, is invested in its success as a festival. I think the fact that folk are willing to open up their homes and front gardens to the public is a sure sign that we're a community who wants to share and collaborate together.

There's no way that the festival would be able to run on such a large scale - almost 100 venues this year! - if it wasn't for the community offering their time, homes & businesses for all our fab events.

What is your favourite Made in Roath memory?

As this year is fresh in my mind, I think it would probably be from Sunday evening. All of the events I was coordinating had finished and my partner had come to meet me to help pick up the last bits of workshop materials. I was absolutely exhausted and it had just started to rain but I was determained to do something Made-in-Roath-y before I went home, so we headed to the Vintage Tea Stoppe. 

We sat on a wet vintage bench, in the rain, having tea & banana loaf on vintage tableware whilst listening to lovely vintage music and it was bliss!

Tell us a secret about Roath.

I heard that there's a door in an alleyway behind Roath Park Primary School, that can only be seen at twilight during Roath Park Bowling Club's meetings. Why they meet at twilight I don't know. It's a bit weird for a bowling club.

Mohamed Hamza

The open house idea is one of the best things about Made in Roath. If the title requires further explanation, it involves the people of Roath opening their homes for all to visit, hosting some sort of event or exhibition. We called into 32 Kelvin Rd to see Mohamed Hamza’s portraits, which are taken from his exhibition in the Butetown History & Arts Centre. 

 


















There is something inherently pleasing looking at art in someone else’s living room. I think it’s something to do with community spirit, realising that people are generally nice and trusting of you, making you feel nice and trustworthy when walking through their homes without grabbing their loose change or emptying their fridge. I will however admit to nosing at their book collection.

Our very own Rebecca had a chat with Nia, the mastermind behind the open houses at MiR. Read it here.

Made in Roath may have finished for this year but you can see the complete exhibition at the Butetown History & Arts Centre. You can find out more about Mohamed Hamza’s work here.

Settlement: The Howardian Nature Reserve

As readers of this blog will know I attended Settlement last Friday; a day long artist-led workshop, which involved a tour of the Howardian Nature Reserve under the thoughtful guidance of artist Ben Connors. In the 70s this reserve was a landfill site, and was transformed by the local community into this oasis of wilderness, smack bang in the commercial heartland of Newport Road. 

Ben, introducing us to the walk

Using our natural surroundings as an ideological framework, Ben - in the company of park ranger Raj - led us on a thoughtful and immensely intellectually stimulating walk, which included a lecture from Raj on the history of the site, and several intensive discussions on the nature of art, the role of art within community settings, and why it is that as both artists and as community members it is important we continue to engage with each other.

While we were exercising our brains and legs, talented photographer Nigel Pugh was racing up and down, snapping pictures of our group looking their most thoughtful. 

Nigel very kindly offered to send me some of these pictures to support my blog post - which given the intellectual stimulation of the walk, I was envisioning as an essay of gargantuan proportions.

Then I actually received the photos - all of which are below, and are beautiful - and thought: sod that, I'll just let you guys admire some proper handiwork instead. 

I'm sure you're all very relieved.

I look pensive, but I'm probably thinking about lunch

If you get the chance folks, please do go explore the Howardian nature reserve - that's if you haven't already. And if Raj is there, say hello! He's very informative. 

Also be sure to check out Ben Connors' website, listed below - he plans on making a Settlement-inspired comic, so you're gonna want to keep your eyes peeled for that.

Lastly, all credit for the lovely photographs goes to Nigel Pugh.


-Rebecca

Ben Connors lives online here.

Nigel Pugh can be located on Flickr here and on Twitter @nspugh 

Performing Women's Work Songs and Writing Cardiff's Lost Places

Making Marks with Songs: Work Song Drawing and Performance
18 October, 4pm, Milgi Yurt

The before shot: playdough, all ready for a thumping

 On Saturday I had the pleasure of attending (even if I did only manage to rock up half way through) one of the most intriguing workshops I have ever attended. 

Run by singer Frankie Armstrong and visual artist Jessica Akerman, 'Making Marks with Songs' attempted to replicate the act of 'waulking' - the olden-days technique of shrinking and softening newly woven tweed to completion by thumping it along a table, in groups. These groups were composed of women, and the task was often long and laborious - so to carry them through the work these women would sing. 

These work songs were an important part of Scottish Gaelic culture, and were often lead by one woman: in our case, the very talented Frankie. The songs which survived the years did so orally, and we were very lucky to have Frankie with us, to lead the group by example and give them life once more. 

In the latter half of the workshop I caught, we sang as a group twice. The first time, each with a ball of dough to knead and thump as we wished, we sang in a round - a structure which quickly devolved into a freestyle session in which the group parted and came together again, meeting in random harmonies, a sudden flurry of clapping, or a low hum building through all of us. We let the song end when it felt natural to do so, and while at first I felt quite awkward (especially as I have a terrible singing voice) very quickly I became distracted by the physical - and quite tiring! - work that I was doing, and my self-conciousness slipped away.

This led to a wonderful form of abstract freedom, very akin to childhood play, as many in the group acknowledged afterwards, commenting that they 'didn't care what I sounded like', that the session was 'trance-like' and 'shut the clatter out.' Everyone commented on the communal nature of the activity, and even after only spending half an hour in their company, I felt very connected to my fellow singers.

We completed the session with another song - this time a call and a response, in which we had to pass the dough from one person to the next, perhaps closer resembling what tweed thumping may have actually been like. This proved more difficult, as it involved more consideration of your neighbours - truly highlighting the skills of concentration and endurance these women must have developed.

As we packed up I had a few words with Jessica, and she spoke of her plans to artistically respond to the shapes we had made with the dough, and to repeat the experiment on a larger scale, with perhaps hundreds of people. I can only sincerely hope that happens - the experiment was so absorbing and affirming on a small scale, I can barely imagine how transformative a experience it might become if shared by ten times our number.
  
Cardiff Alms - Re-inventing the Blue Plaques
19 October, 1 - 2:30pm, Poets Corner Pub

An entirely different artform, but I got to experience another highly engaging workshop on Sunday. This creative writing workshop, skilfully led by current Cardiff Creative Writing MA Jodie Kay Ashdown, had a specific focus: lost places and things. Jodie had helpfully listed several of these specific to Cardiff - old cinema the Monico, the Sapphire Gardens pavilion, even conductors on buses!- and provided us with examples of eulogies, in which the places were honoured as people would be. After all, sometimes a place can mean just as much.

Over the course of an hour and a half we were encouraged to create similar tributes - whether the place we had in mind was a beloved pub or a set of public toilets, based in Cardiff or not at all: I commemorated a roller disco of my youth, which I had entirely forgotten about up until that point.


Amazingly this was Jodie's first ever workshop, as she told me afterwards: 'I really enjoyed it. Some people who might have been a bit reticent about writing came up with some really good stuff. Definitely going to do it again.'

In which case, I would highly recommend you attend folks - who knows what places you might recover?


-Rebecca

Frankie Armstrong lives on the internet here.

Jessica Akerman's website resides here and she can also be found on Twitter @jessicaakerman

Jodie Kay Ashdown -'Writer, reader, gin drinker' - lives on the internet here and can be found on Twitter @Surfingsunshine 

 

Cabaret Showcase: The Antics of Marmaille and Honey O'Matics

18 October 2014, 8pm - late, Milgi's Warehouse

I am ashamed to admit that Saturday night was the first time I've had cause to step foot in the warehouse behind Milgi - and 'warehouse' is an entirely misleading term. Or at least it was this weekend, when the space had been transformed in accordance to 'Art in the Speakeasy Warehouse' project.

Not for the first time that day (see my earlier post) I felt like I'd stepped through a wormhole - or the TARDIS doors - and ended up on the other end of a time corridor; and I definitely crowbarred all those sci-fi references in just there, in order to further indulge my fantasy of being the Doctor. I own two sonic screwdrivers, so its plausible. (I also own a laser screwdriver, and am equally open to being the Master ...)


Milgi's warehouse was low-lit and warmly decorated with fringed lampshades and curtains draped across the blackboard walls, across which WWII era slogans ('Loose lips sink ships') and chorus lines of women's legs were sketched. The speakers pumped with the charmingly sleazy sound of the Bryan Ferry's revamped 'Love is the Drug', pinched rather appropriately from Baz Luhrmann's recent Great Gatsby adaptation. It set the mood nicely, creating the right expectations for the bawdy and baroque entertainment awaiting us.

Our host for the evening was the highly charismatic Jayde Adams, who was recently announced as the winner of Funny Women 2014. I did not know this at the time however, and was simply impressed by her amazing M&M trousers. (I now have a dire need for an entire M&M wardrobe, cheers Jayde.)

Jayde kicked off the evening's strong bent towards audience participation (which got increasingly ... 'intimate' as the evening went on, particularly by the time we reached Marmaille's act) by plucking a volunteer, Paul, to perform an operatic duet with her. In a fashion which recalled Anne Robinson during her Weakest Link years she actually got the crowd - and we were a very crowded crowd, packing out the warehouse wall to wall - to pick the volunteer: sorry Paul!

Unfortunately my shitty camera kinda obscures the glory of the M&M trousers

Decked out in a sequinned jacket ('so you look less like a sex offender Paul') the pair held hands throughout an operatic duet (definitely for dramatic impact, and definitely not to prevent Paul from running away) which included a lot of actual singing from Jayde and a lot of blushing and embarrassed hand gestures from Paul. You took one for the team Paul, and we thank you for it.  

Then after a quick lesson in clapping (there's a scale that runs from 1 to 9, we discovered) we were on to the first act!

Unfortunately, due to the aforementioned clapping, I rather lost the next act's name in his introduction. Corrections are very welcome in the comments below, but for now I will say that Stand-Up-Whose-Name-I-Unfortunately-Did-Not-Catch-But-I-Think-Might-Have-Been-Dustin? regaled us with an impressively delivered comedy set, with humour that ranged from the regional, to the unrepentantly innuendo-laden. 


Comedy shortly gave way to cabaret, and next up was Honey O'Matics and the grand opening of her launderette! Unfortunately Greg the Contortionist never made it out of his cardboard box to join in ... not even when Honey stabbed it a few times with a kitchen knife. Y'know. To encourage him. 

Honey O'Matics takes to the stage and my camera is as shit as ever

But fear not, Greg's non-appearance (which looked to have become a permanent state of affairs) segued nicely into Honey's musical number, about that most universal of topics: serial killing. A song which truly spoke to the human condition, and which the audience were quickly drawn into singing along to. The lyrics weren't too complex ('I keep killing, and killing, and killing, again!').

This musical interlude got interactive when Honey summoned three audience members on-stage, who were instructed to scrawl bad date experiences onto pairs of oversized knickers, which they were then instructed to don for another round of the song.

Unfortunately we never got to hear the full story behind these un-fortuitous dates - a pity. 'I yelled out vagina' begs all sorts of questions.

Honey helps this audience member get her undies on

Mr I-Yelled-Out-Vagina, looking a bit bashful

The compete lineup, with their lyric-sheets

After Honey O'Matics had closed up shop for the day, we were ushered out into the lane, where after a short interlude the warehouse doors were once again thrown open - by Marmaille. 
 

Actual quality photo shamelessly knicked off Twitter

A clown with the face of an angel, and a bridal vision with the face of a clown, Marmaille welcomed us back in one by one, brusquely distributing 'oui' and 'non' stickers out in turn, which played a later role in the audience participation selection process.

Marmaille, 'a brash and eccentric “French” lady searching for a husband' with a death stare to rival Darth Vader, kicked off her set with a video of herself in which she clarified for the audience's benefit that she did not live in the internet. It also included sped-up footage of Marmaille hunting the shoreline for a husband, to which we were encouraged to add 'the Benny Hill music' in our heads.

She then proceeded to scoff pastries and guzzle wine, in accordance to a Buzzfeed list of Reasons to Date a French Girl, read out (a little ineffectually) by a (not-so) helpful member of the audience whom Marmaille rewarded with a bit of a snog. He only seemed mildly traumatised after.

 The climax (pun fully intended) of the affair came in a round of bizarro world Blind Date - just imagine Cilla Black in the 'Allo 'Allo universe. To everyone's surprise Marmaille rejected all three of her suitors, and copped off with the wall - obligingly played by my mate Dan.

Jayde Adams then returned for a grandstanding finale (which I won't spoil, for those of you who might see one of her shows in the future, and I highly recommend you do) - but may I just say, it involved the most impressive means of flipping someone off I've seen in quite some time. 

   
-Rebecca

  To find out more about Jayde Adams you can swing by her website or chat to her on Twitter @jaydeadams 
 
By day Honey O'Matics is Kelly Jones, and lives on the internet here. She can also be found on Twitter @thedrownedgirl 
 
Marmaille also masquerades as Rachel Helena Walsh and can be found on Twitter @theatretheatre