Roger Lougher - Babell/Tent

29th June - 14th July 

Weekends Only - 10am-5pm

Babell /\ Tent [Tirlun#2 Landscape #2]

We are presented with a landscape. Perhaps a crime scene. Is landscape genre the victim? Could the crime be aggravated assault?

Roger Lougher is playful in his search to develop a language, new to him, for making work in an old tradition.

Babell is the name of a chapel in the Epynt Mountains that is now fallen into ruin, although the graveyard is maintained. Here Babell is a translation into the Welsh of Tabernacle, the tent in which the ark of the covenant was kept. The name suggests the temporary nature of our presence in the landscape. It also suggests childhood, camping out in fields and gardens. There is perhaps the suggestion of an army encampment: further reinforced as we now understand the title refers to a place within SENTA [https://www.gov.uk/public-access-to-military-areas#sennybridge-and-epynt-way] in the Brecon Beacons. The title might inspire the viewer to journey back and forth through time and muse on the dark overtones to our games as children as we rehearse future lives. It might also bring to mind the displacement of people within countries engulfed by war or famine and remind us of the precariousness of all our existences.

Roger Lougher says, “My inspiration comes when I am working at Melin Glonc in Drefach Felindre: coppicing trees, planting hedges, scything or gardening and weeding. The artwork comes from the embodied gesture fueled by two-stroke as I flood my surroundings with the music of the chainsaw or in the case of scything moving meditatively in a cacophony of birdsong.”

Babell /\ Tent [Tirlun#2 Landscape #2]

O’n blaenau – tirlun. Efallai man lle bu trosedd. Ai tirwedd ei hunan yw’r dioddefwr? A beth yw’r drosedd – ymosodiad ffyrnig?

Mae Roger Lougher yn hoff o chwarae gyda syniadau wrth iddo geisio datblygu iaith, sydd yn newydd iddo fo, ond yn deillio o hen draddodiad. 

Enw ar gapel ym Mynyddoedd Epynt yw Babell, erbyn hyn yn adfail ond y fynwent yn dal i gael ei chynnal a’i chadw. Cyfieithiad i’r Gymraeg yw Babell o’r gair Tabernacl sef y babell lle cedwid arch y cyfamod. Mae’r enw yn awgrymu natur dros dro ein presenoldeb yn y tirlun; hefyd, plentyndod, a gwersylla yn y cae a’r ardd. O bosib, gwersyll milwrol, yn arbennig pan sylweddolwn fod y teitl yn cyfeirio at leoliad tu fewn i SENTA ym Mannau Brycheiniog [https://www.gov.uk/public-access-to-military-areas#sennybridge-and-epynt-way]. Gallai’r teitl ysbrydoli’r gwyliwr i fynd nôl trwy amser a myfyrio ar dywyllwch gemau plentyndod wrth inni ymarfer ein bywydau i ddod. Efallai ei fod yn gwneud inni feddwl am y rhai a ddadleolwyd oherwydd rhyfel a newyn; ac yn ein hatgoffa o freuder ein bodolaeth.

Dywed Roger Lougher, “Rwyf yn cael f’ysbrydoli wrth dorri coed, plannu perthi, pladuro neu chwynnu a garddio. Mae’r gwaith hwn yn deillio o symudiadau penodol wedi eu tanio gyda ‘two-stroke’ wrth imi lenwi’r goedlan gyda miwsig y llif gadwyn; neu bladuro’r gwair gan symud yn fyfyriol a gwrando ar gacoffoni cân yr adar.”