CAULDRON OF IMAGININGS – performance with cast iron

This year artists from Wales – Andy Griffiths, Matthew Tomalin and their students from the Carmarthen School of Art will present a performance using molten iron entitled "CAULDRON OF IMAGININGS".

In their artistic activity Andy Griffiths and Matthew Tomalin pay a lot of attention to performance. Iron pours are for them not only a technical, repetitive process but a spectacle in itself. The public will be invited to take part in the performance.

Matthew Tomalin (born 1945) received his BA in Sociology & Politics from Sussex University in 1966. The following year  –  and by pure good fortune  –  he discovered the pleasures of working in metals in a small jewellery workshop in Mexico. Returning to the UK he continued to research, and to teach himself, before completing a jewellery course, from 1972-74, at Sir John Cass College (now part of London Metropolitan University.) He continued to work as a jeweller, and from 1977 to 1996 he ran the jewellery workshop at Herefordshire College of Art and Design. In the early 1990s he began working at a much larger and more experimental scale in a variety of non-precious metals, and then in 1995  –  again by pure luck  –  he was introduced to ironcasting at Harvey Hood’s Berllanderi Studios in South Wales. In 1997, a WCMT-funded study tour in America enabled him to work with several of the leading lights in the artist-ironcasting field, and in 1998 (with sculptor Richard Renshaw) he built an iron foundry at his studio. Iron has been his main material since then, and he has been one of those responsible for building and maintaining South Wales as an important UK centre for artists’ iron.

Andy Griffiths (born 1956) – a sculptor, a programme Co-Ordinator of a BA Sculpture, Casting, Carving and Construction program in Carmarthen School of Art. Andy Griffiths grew up in North Wales and studied his foundation course at Wrexham College before leaving education to be the lead singer of a punk band ‘The Wall’ from 1978-1983 before returning to study a BA (hons) degree in Fine Art Sculpture at Central School of Art and Design. He moved to West Wales in 1994 and started lecturing at Carmarthen School of Art on the Sculpture course. He has continued to make sculpture and exhibit his work annually over the last 30 years, completing several commissions and working mainly in stone, bronze and cast iron. His work is in collections in the UK, Europe and the United States.