Helen Turner's Page

Like many British cities, Cardiff has a lively, growing contemporary art scene receiving little press attention. Its art scene as a whole has struggled to develop and keep its new branches upright as funds disappear and media coverage proves inadequate. One contemporary art gallery in The Hays managed to stay open for just a year before being sold off as a trendy bar, while innovative plans for an opera house

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I found Daniel Meadows's digital stories to be spontaneous, witty, and poignant - especially Richard Pugh's baffled tale about his wife's shoe collection. The anecdotal focus gives it, as Meadows put it, "that wonderful humanity" and a "scrapbook aesthetic". He said: "I want the ghastly ones to be there." But regarding the 'New Media' debate, I don't really se… Continue

Richard Burton presented a striking perspective of new media, - which wasn't chilling at all, but quite the opposite. While he considered past relations between readers and journalists as distant, changes in digital media have allowed journalism to become a conversational and warmer medium. He used a less nostalgic image of Fleet Street past, with a hack peering down and observing the ant-like movements of people on the st… Continue

Looking at local art is always a brilliant way of engaging with a place and the kind of people that live there. When going abroad, people tend to make a special effort to visit famous galleries highlighted as unmissable in their guidebooks, and then neglect art with great potential closer to home. Unfortunately a lot of art becomes overshadowed by more dramatic (and baffling) perfomance art, installations and diamond-incrursted skulls, and the kind of mondian-inspired commercial art which is gua… Continue