Map of Wales
Discover Paul Davies' Earth Work Relief Map of Wales.
"Every day I make a Map of Wales"
Paul Davies, founding member of Welsh art group Beca, is particularly known for his series of maps of Wales. Making a Map of Wales for him was a daily technique of positioning himself and his art practice in Wales. A Wales that was not devolved, yet. A Wales that was still fighting for self government, and the recognition of the Welsh language and culture. Beca was seeking to develop a new visual language for Wales, polemic, progressive, playful. Creating art about Wales, with others in Wales, was a form of social practice to Paul. Co-creation instigated radical imagination and dialogue about the state of Wales, the state of the arts in Wales - and the state of communities in Wales.
Let's continue this dialogue through doing things together.
Paul Davies
Paul Davies (1947-1993) is a core figure in the emergence of a consciously political and socially-engaged art practice in Wales. In the 1970s Paul and his brother Peter Davies (1944-2024) founded the art group Beca. Beca became a focus for an activist practice, directly engaging with language and cultural identity at a time when these issues were increasingly being discussed with reference to greater political self-determination for Wales.
Davies’ practice has had an important but under-researched influence and legacy on the visual
arts in Wales. His Welsh Not performance at the National Eisteddfod in 1977 has increasingly been recognised as a key turning point in the history of art in Wales. The work has been widely discussed in writing on Welsh art and has featured in recent exhibitions notably Ni allaf ddianc rhag hon – the opening displays of National Museum Cardiff’s new contemporary galleries in 2011. However, Paul Davies’ arti practice was diverse and varied and cannot be solely defined by this important but singular action.
Davies’ work defies easy categorisation: it incorporates painting, drawing, sculpture, installation, earthworks, performance, and ambitious (often unrealised) proposals to work in the public realm. There is a strong community-based, pedological approach to his work that together with his environmental and political activism, underlines a socially-engaged practice decades ahead of its time. Davies’ work often happened outside of a traditional museum or gallery environment, and often did not produce a ‘finished’ work of art.