Rabab Ghazoul

Ongoing

A Cardiff-based arts organisation for contemporary art and social change

In 2016, I set up a new company so as to address some of the more uncomfortable conditions and realities I had sometimes faced as an artist working with institutions, or organisations in general, who’s agendas were so often informed by outcomes over process, by delivery over enquiry.

I also wanted to create a space where we could talk about decoloniality in our work, where we could talk about power, where we could curate, collaborate, challenge, push, create change and come together. For more information on the company, look up the website at gentleradical.org

‘Thinking Of You Cymru’ commission, 2020

Eight texts for the revolution
Three radishes, chard, and mint

Text taken from Nimo Omer’s article, gal-dem, 27th April: ‘Death wasn’t supposed to be in the job description for ethnic minority key workers’

Text-based placards, October 2016

Working with over 55’s at the Glynn Vivian Art Gallery, the project explored textual responses to the Glynn Vivian collections and archive, in particular the relationships we have to the world of art, to art making, to a painting, or to an object. Working with texts drawn from written and improvised responses to gallery collections, as well as transcribed conversations and dialogues, the project culminated in a series of text-based placards created for a community parade through Swansea marking the re-opening of the gallery post re-furbishment.

Digital video 2015/16.

"The highlight is Rabab Ghazoul’s film piece, displayed on several monitors throughout the show. Members of the public have been filmed at their homes discussing various aspects of the Chilcot Enquiry. By commenting on Tony Blair’s body language or repeating parts of his answers, the emphasis is on justice as public performance and the slippery relationship between truth and falsehood."

The Very Best of the Venice Biennale, Crystal Bennes and Tom Jeffreys

Apollo International Art Magazine, 11th May 2015

Premiering at the Iraqi Pavilion at the 2015 Venice Biennale, It's a long way back (Chilcot/Part 1) is the first in a new series of works being developed in 2015/16/17. The Iraqi Pavilion is curated by Philippe Van Cauteren of S.M.A.K., Ghent, and the commissioners are the Ruya Foundation, Baghdad.

Drawing upon the transcript and documentation of Tony Blair's 2010 testimonial to the Chilcot Inquiry (a UK government inquiry into the invasion of Iraq), It's a long way back takes this text as its point of departure. 

This new body of work unfolding over 2015/16/17 will include video works, durational performance and a festival. It's a long way back (Chilcot/Part II) travels to S.M.A.K., Ghent, May 2016, and the Kunsthalle, Sao Paulo, Brazil, in 2017.

Performed readings and conversation

2015

Commissioned by Alserkal Avenue, and curated by Anabelle de Gersigny, the Safina Radio Project was an itinerant space, a boat transformed into a recording studio that navigated the waterways of Venice, during the opening week of the 56th Biennale, transporting passengers from one place to another, acting as a roving platform for conversation and exchange.

Invited to participate in one of these conversations, the artist invited her father, Ramez Ghazoul, into a dialogue and series of performative readings, based on excerpts from his extensive email archive. The 'travelogue', referencing conflicts in the Middle East and their mis-representation, combined readings of Ramez Ghazoul's correspondence with close friends through to those with international broadcasting corporations.

A grassroots Film Club project based in Cardiff

Ongoing since 2004

The Gentle/Radical Film Club - originally set up as the BME Women’s Film Club - was established with a question in mind: with the wealth of independent and international film coming out of the Middle East, Africa, South America, Asia, and Eastern Europe, why do so few of the diverse communities on our doorstep access it?

The Film Club was set up in 2004 and is the only cultural project in Wales to have sustained ongoing provision to diverse communities for over a decade. We work in community settings, and show the best of international independent cinema to those who rarely access it. We curate bespoke film programmes and events targeting groups and individuals who aren’t walking into your average arthouse cinema space. 

In addition to daytime screenings for women, and youth focused screenings, we also host evening mixed gender events aimed at bringing a range of communities together, as well as ground-up People’s Symposiums which bring together communities, film, food and invited speakers to discuss some the most critical issues of our time - from climate justice to Palestine, from food poverty to racism. We are interested in long term (as opposed to temporary) accesss, cultural democratization, and cultural integration. We organise events that try and bring these things about.

Photographs Jon Poutney and Vedat Xhymshiti

An Ideas People Places project for Artes Mundi, RCT Homes and Valleys Kids, supported by the Arts Council of Wales.

2016

Working with young people in the South Wales Valleys, this project explored landscape, local landmarks, memory and agency as articulated by a group of young people living in Penygraig and its surrounding areas.

The project culminated in a series of text based public artworks installed in 20 sites across the town. Texts evolved over an 8 month period of exploration around recordings and transcriptions of dialogues conducted within the group, with local people, and on visits and walks through urban and rural landscapes.

For the project launch, we organised an art walk for local residents to see and hear about the artworks installed in their town.

Photographs: Dan Green and Michal Ivanowski

Found family photograph of the artist's brother. Mosul, 1972.

2014

Commission for Cardiff Art Map

Public realm + video 

2009

Mao Hope March Revisited involved an updating and re-staging of artist Oyvindh Fahlstrom's performance intervention and 16mm film work, Mao Hope March, which he created in New York in 1966.

Fahlstrom's original work involved the documentation of a silent march, which used placards carrying the images of Bob Hope and Mao Tse Tung. The film's audio consisted of the responses of passers by to the question: "do you consider yourself to be happy?"

The project in Cardiff invited people to discuss suggestions for an updating of the figures of Mao/Hope. Votes were cast, and the winning suggestions used to make new placards, and an equivalent march mounted through the streets of Cardiff, in which passers by were asked the question "do you consider yourself to be happy?"

Video

2013

One of 5 commissioned video works for Marc Rees and Theatr Genedlaethol’s Tir Sir Gar project, 'an alternative contemporary rural vision’ taking place at two sites, Carmarthensire County Museum in Abergwili and St Peter’s Civic Hall in Carmarthen.

The work explored milk production, the dairy industry, and the precarious life and livelihood of farmers.

Curated by the artist for g39 Gallery, to mark Parliament Week.

2013

The event invited presentations, stand up, workshops and commentary on the theme of democracy, interrogating the assumption (according to the organisers of Parliament Week) that our current configuration of the democratic is working.

Contributors included stand-up comedian Simon Munnery // Artist Sara Rees // Artist Sam Hasler // Activist/Historian (Women's Liberation Music Archive) Deborah Withers // Academic (Cardiff University Politics Department) Jonathan Kirkup // Artist Stefhan Caddick

Digital video work

2015

John William Stevens (1940 - 1994) was one of the most significant figures in early free improvisation, and a founding member of the Spontaneous Music Ensemble. He developed community music exercises, and taught his exercise ‘Realisation’ on community music courses.

‘Realisation’ is a sung exercise. Each syllable within the sentence ‘realisation of all human rights’ is sung and held until the breath has run out. The following syllable is taken up, one note higher than the last. When the final syllable is sung, the singer starts again, this time coming down the octave, singing each syllable one note lower than the last.

Photographic documentation + video

2014

In the lead up to Christmas 2013 a series of Coca-Cola billboards appeared in Cardiff. The advertising campaign featured Santa Clause next to the caption, "I believe in you".

A call was put out to Cardiff residents to meet under an empty billboard, and sell an alternative to being believed in by a transnational corporation. The value of knowledge of each other, the city, individual connections were emphasised through an alternative slogan. Many who participated didn't know each other. Others did. Everyone came to know each other more. 

Ideas People Places project for Artes Mundi, RCT Homes and Valleys Kids

2014

A regeneration project, connecting an international art prize to communities in the South Wales Valleys. Site-responsive art works (to include a series of community portraits) were developed with young people from Valleys Kids, alongside Penygraig community residents. 

Photographs: Michal Ivanowski

Day-long durational sung work, 44 singers

2013

Vocal score composed by the artist, with music/lyrics adapted from a 16th century English round, based on Psalm 137 of the Old Testament.

"By the waters of Babylon...we lay down and wept...we remember"

44 singers gathered to learn a six-part vocal score on 13th March 2013 - the 10th anniversary of the 2003 Iraq invasion.

Singers had no prior knowledge of the music, or experience of singing together before. The intention was to avoid a 'finished' polished performance, and instead lay bare, over one day, the mechanics of realising a sung work: learning, listening, cooperating, negotiating, making space for the other, allowing the individual voice, allowing the collective voice. Visitors to the gallery were invited to sit and listen. For as long as they wished.

Helen Chadwick conducted the realisation of the work, Celia Webb assisted. Singing participants were drawn from a network of individual singers, folk singers and community choirs across South Wales.

A4 digital prints, Epson inkjet printer. 

2010

Texts are drawn from the titles of Western led and backed military operations since 1917.

2 channel video, 19 minutes

2009

The terms of a controversial 2006 Sky News interview are revealed through the responses of eight pairs of individuals invited to view it. And discuss what they see.

Event + Celebration

2012

Come celebrate the sights, sounds and tastes of your local indoor market! Indoor markets have always been special, unique places, where stallholders have often traded for decades, offering the personal touch, and friendly one-to-one service. We want to celebrate all the good things about Bridgend’s market and invite you to an exciting indoor-market evening social!!

Traders' Turns was one of several events taking place during the artist's year long residency in Bridgend, South Wales. Her task: to 'regenerate the town centre', and 'increase footfall.' The Indoor Market was neglected, depressed, underused. Traders were dispirited. Traders' Turns was about trying to introduce people to the market in a different way. Alongside traders doing their own 'turn's, artists, writers, musicians, performers inhabited the space for an evening, turning the market into a space of community, of festivity, of possibility.

Walk + dialogues + photographic collage.

2012

The Empty Shop Crawl was one of several community-led responses to issues around local regeneration. Bridgend residents were frustrated with increasing numbers of unoccupied retail spaces in their town. The ‘crawl' set out to document every shop standing empty in the town centre. 54 were identified in total.

Documentation of the process formed the basis of dialogues with local Bridgend councillors, who were invited to meet with residents to discuss concerns about the town's future. These dialogues led to pressure on local decision makers to address urgent issues around regeneration - the threatened closure of the library, pedestrianisation, the loss of local businesses, the lack of cultural provision in the town. As an outcome of these dialogues the library, despite closure, has since been turned into a permanent community arts space. Carnegie House is the first arts space of its kind in Bridgend, and a legacy of the residency programme.

Art About Us Bridgend was part of a 10-month residency and arts regeneration programme led by the artist in 2012.

The Empty Shop Crawl was realised by residents Louvain Rees, Freya Sykes, Harriet Hopkins, Rachel Bell, Sef Khama, Catherine Rees, and photographers Dan Wood and Kate MacLeod.

Procession + audio interviews + digital video

2012

'What/Who' was one of several community responses to issues around local regeneration. Leading an arts residency within a town regeneration programme, the artist worked alongside local Bridgend residents to explore, dismantle and get to grips with what regeneration actually meant to them. The procession emerged in response to a discussion about responsibility - who bore responsibility for transformation locally? What needed to be done? And who needed to do it? 

The procession took place through the town centre, over one afternoon. Passers by were asked the question, 'What do you think needs to be done' and 'Who do you think needs to do it'.

Art About Us Bridgend was part of a 10-month residency and arts regeneration programme led by the artist in 2012.

The 'What/Who' procession was realised by Barrington Miller, Diana Apperly, Louvain Rees, Andre Van Wyck, Luke Biddle, Freya Sykes, Harriet Hopkins, Sef Khama and students from Bridgend College.

Single channel video

2009

The titles of Western led military operations over the last 60 years were used to create an overlapping sequence. Titles merge to create new meanings. New titles.

Market stall, printed T-shirts, mixed media.

2009

Project commission, Safle/National Eistedfodd of Wales

“I wanted to discover something about this place that had no reference to war, but in the fifteen minutes I've spent searching I haven't managed it. That is quite sobering, and I feel a sadness for the city because of it.”  (extract: response to Ramadi, project participant)

A market stall, with T-shirts referencing Iraqi towns, in the style of the iconic ‘I heart NY’ design.

Other T-shirts displayed consisted of responses from members of the public to an invitation sent out by the artist:

Select an Iraqi city or town from the list provided

Try to discover something about this place

Submit a paragraph detailing your experience of the task

Include, somewhere within your response, a reference to Wales

Digital print

2010

A public petition, calling for signatures, received by the artist.

Mixed media

2004

Single channel video.

2008

Video work charting the dismantling of large tracts of Cardiff's city centre, to make way for city centre regeneration in the form of the St Davids II Shopping Centre. 

Walk + paper + pencils

2008

Walks. With another. In silence. Through the city. At the end of the walk, we write each other a letter. Exchange letters. And part.

Baking + neighbourhood intervention

On a long busy street, it is difficult to know one's neighbours. On a long busy street, it can be tricky to build a sense of community.

Five days were spent baking enough baklava to distribute to each household on the street, 213 in all. Delivering the baklawa, and explaining the reasons, was met with a variety of responses: confusion, curiosity, suspicion, enthusiasm, conversation.

Three-channel video

2005

Exploring place and language, and the forgetting of place and language. Home and belonging, and changes in home and belonging. The work was developed in collaboration with the artist's father. 

Spliced piano, plaster board, wooden frame, single channel digital video, audio of artist attempting to learn a piano score

2005

Text: 'Precarious Life, the Powers of Mourning and Violence', Judith Butler

Single channel colour digital video.

Eight individuals move through the Pemborkeshire landscape, each attempting to carry a polystyrene board above their head. The soundtrack documents a conversation between a group of people trying to arrive at a consensus about an anthem they have been singing. And are collectively invested in.

Intervention + installation + project

Llandaff Fields Allotments

2008

A year long project, that began with a question about seeds, growing, legislation, and patents. 

Neon text, greenhouse, digital video

2008

Plywood text, fishing wire.

2009

"One's body leaves home for the mountain of death" is an extract from a letter titled "Hell Is the land of Tranquil Light", written by 13th century Japanese priest Nichiren to a female follower.

Transcription of found footage + digital print

2013

Transcription of an army Chaplain's address to US marines shortly before a sortie in the Helmand region of Afghanistan.