Sean Edwards: Undo Things Done

Refrain, a live radio play will broadcast daily at 2pm 

Preview: May 8–10, 2019 

Sean Edwards (b.1980) represents Wales in Venice 2019 with a solo exhibition presented by guest curator Marie-Anne McQuay and lead organisation Tŷ Pawb. Commissioned by Arts Council of Wales for one of the Collateral Event of the 58th Venice Biennale, Edwards’ exhibition Undo Things Done marks the ninth Venice Biennale presentation by Wales. The exhibition will be at Santa Maria Ausiliatrice, Castello from May 11 to November 24, 2019 and is free to visit. 

Undo Things Done, a poetic inquiry into place, politics and class, intertwined with personal histories, is the artist’s first major presentation at an international biennale. 

Known for his sculptural approach to the everyday, Edwards often begins with seemingly unrelated elements linked by autobiographical and cultural connections. These range from the 1970s shopping centre near the housing estate where he grew up to Springsteen’s album Nebraska, a Welsh quilting group, snooker, tabloid newspapers, and various found materials. 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. 

Edwards’ new body of work includes sculpture, film, prints, Welsh quilts and a live daily radio broadcast, and takes its starting point from the artist’s experience of growing up on a council estate in Cardiff in the 1980s. Edwards is interested in 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. 

Included in the show is Edwards’ new time-based commission, a live play for radio entitled Refrain produced in partnership with National Theatre Wales, which leaves a haunting residue in the building. The live broadcast takes place once a day at 2pm for the entire run of the Venice Biennale 2019. The script performed by the artist’s mother and transmitted to Venice from her home in Cardiff, draws on both personal experience and found materials. Her voice, elderly, accented by her Northern Irish background and not accustomed to making a public address, will at times hesitate and repeat. It becomes a part of the work, shifting the atmosphere in the rooms with its presence and absence. 

Publication
The exhibition is accompanied by an English and Welsh language publication of the same name, Undo Things Done, designed with Wayne Daly of Daly & Lyon. Authors: Clive Cazeaux, Moyra Davey, Kate Davies, Daisy Lafarge, Lynsey Hanley, Helen Nisbet, Elen Phillips with an introduction by exhibition curator Marie-Anne McQuay. 

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