barrinstationsproject

2007-03-08T12:19:00.000-08:00

Barry Stations Project The Barry Stations Project was introduced by Spectrum in Spring of 2006 to encourage artists to produce works based on Barry’s greatest legacy-its railways and its stations.

Led by Shirley Anne Owen, Claire Davies, Hannah Gray, and Russ Taylor, a series of workshops were held and the result was a comprehensive range of written work and artwork. The central core of this work will be exhibited in the Spectrum Traveller’s Gallery, Barry Station and at Barry Island Station-the artwork and poems shown side by side. Work can be viewed at these venues from Friday 2nd March until Wednesday 25th April 2007. This Blog website includes most but not all of the work produced.

Participating Artists were:

Shirley Anne Owen
Claire Davies
Roger Casling
Geraldus John
Hanah Gray
Steve Hitchens
Paul Baker

2007-03-08T12:07:00.000-08:00

What is the Spectrum Arts Partnership?

The Vale of Glamorgan based Spectrum Arts Initiative is a pioneering partnership of artists and arts and mental health agencies which aims to encourage the creative potential of people with mental health problems in the Vale and throughout South Wales. The aims of the Spectrum Arts Partnership include:

§ Improving opportunities for local people to become involved in the Arts as a way of gaining and sustaining good mental health.
§ Removing obstacles for people recovering from mental health problems to access arts activities and resources.
§ Providing support for people recovering from mental health problems to develop their creativity and confidence.
§ Encouraging opportunities for work of quality to be displayed/performed.

The initiative – which drew inspiration from the Studio Upstairs projects in London and Bristol – has enriched both the cultural life of the Vale and the lives of many people recovering from mental health problems through a range of workshops, events and exhibitions.

The Spectrum Arts Partnership includes:

Mind in the Vale of Glamorgan
Cardiff and Vale NHS Trust
Bro Morgannwg NHS Trust
Vale of Glamorgan Council
VOGA (Vale of Glamorgan Artists)
Coed Hills Rural Arts Space
Progress Cymru Theatre Co.
Valley and Vale Arts
Washington Gallery
St Donats Arts Centre
Barry College
And local artists, writers and performers.

2007-03-08T12:00:00.000-08:00

Barry Project Montage
by Geraldus John

2007-03-08T11:56:00.000-08:00

663 Barry Island by Claire Davies

2007-03-08T11:51:00.000-08:00

Mosiac by Claire Davies

2007-03-08T11:46:00.000-08:00

Barry Station Seagull View by Claire Davies

2007-03-08T11:29:00.000-08:00

The End of the Line by Roger Casling

2007-03-07T12:43:00.000-08:00

Cadoxton Station by Shirley Anne Owen

2007-03-07T12:37:00.000-08:00

Heritage 1 by Shirley Anne Owen

2007-03-07T12:14:00.000-08:00

Barry Railway Images by Roger Casling

British Railway Crest on disused Locomotive in Barry Engine Shed

2007-03-07T12:13:00.000-08:00

2007-03-07T11:45:00.000-08:00

2007-03-07T11:41:00.000-08:00

Disused Steam Locomotive Barry Engine Shed
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Graffiti Barry Island Station

2007-03-07T11:39:00.000-08:00

Old Locomotive and Tender Barry Engine Shed

2007-03-07T11:36:00.000-08:00

2007-03-06T08:27:00.000-08:00

Aberdare Train awaiting Departure Barry Island Station

2007-03-06T08:25:00.000-08:00

2007-03-06T08:10:00.000-08:00

Car Park Cadoxton Station

2007-02-27T12:34:00.000-08:00

Heritage 2 by Shirley Anne Owen

2007-02-27T11:31:00.000-08:00

Mists of Time by Geraldus John

Sift the swirling mists of time,
From time extant to time extinct.
There you may find time enough to see
What there has been,
Or what there has not been.
Listen to whispers echoing
From a long lost age,
Perchance to hear the sighs of St. Baruc,
Sad victim of the Severn, who gave name
Not to the dark docklands,
But to the holy place of pilgrimage,
The barren isle of Barri,
And the brief brook, Aber Barri.

Gaze deep into time’s mirrored silence,
To understand man’s dilemma
As waters, Taff and Ely, carried to coast
A blackness to stain fresh beaches. A
Silt destined to destroy the secretive Idyll
Of Barri, Tregatwg, and fair Dyfan.
And foretold that poverty would be replaced
By the antithetical companions of black gold,
The combined curse of filth, and riches.
Stay with me a while and consider
The consequence of a Celtic sequence,
For did not Giraldus Cambrensis,
Gerald of Wales, bear the family name de Barri.

Embedded in zones of lucid stillness,
The Barry, Cadoxton, Dyfan firmament
Bore anxious witness to gathering storms.
Songbirds, alone, disturbed rustic purity,
While from dark woodlands harsh harriers
Contended with raucous cries of seafowl.
It was a place of magic and mystery
Seduced by bedded banks of garlic flowers,
Where, drugged by lotus scented foxgloves,
Lazy elms gave shade to humming bees
That assailed the fragrance of wild flowers.
Low resting, it was a land of floods and farms
From which grew a lofty amphitheatre,
The bold, brash and beautiful town of Barry,
Steely sentinel and witness to a dark progression.

Metamorphosis by Geraldus John

In search of hidden treasure,
Steely men of stone and coal
Ravished the innocence of hill and vale.
Catalyst to the eternal cycle
Of finding, extracting and transporting,
They awakened in odious halls
The twin beasts, Extraction and Death,
Beasts that slithered, as one,
To entwine fearless men
In the blackness of hidden hollows.
Men filled drams with coal, lungs with dust,
Tortured bodies with crippling wounds
And faced danger as a child would a game of chance.
Without malice they scratched green slopes,
And spat their double backed oysters into torn turf.
They wrenched riches from the earth
With the disregard of a back street abortionist
Snatching an embryo, bloody, from the womb.
Defiling their celibate land,
They set a demonic creed,
A malignant need,
To quench a hell bound hunger,
The insatiable hunger of manufacturing.

Behind men of steel and coal stood
Not the best loved men of industrial dawning.
Were these experts in wage manipulation
Early examples of unjust capitalism?
But within their ranks was one
With a foresight granted to few.
Born in Llandinam, Montgomeryshire,
He was to be Davies the Ocean,
A man of conviction and speculation.
Blest by the advent of a last ditch success
With men unpaid for weeks,
He found in upper Rhondda
A massive seam at Cwmparc,
A just reward for their loyalty and trust.

The final fruits of fortune’s wheel fell to Barry,
A township at the right place at the right time,
New railways, new docks, new stations.
The fusion of new peoples.
A new town, a new confidence,
An uncertain, but glittering future.

The new dawn of the beautiful, brazen Barry.

2007-02-27T11:21:00.000-08:00

Barry Dock Station by Shirley Anne Owen

2007-02-27T11:01:00.000-08:00

Barry Dock Station by Geraldus John

When did it start?

The frantic distortion of silence,
Trucks rattling towards dismal tramps
Resounding their thuds, day and night,
When tipped by hoists into hungry holds.
The shore became a wasteland, a stranger
Shrouded in the silence of black fog,
While through a lung clogging blackness
Drizzled a pervading darkness of grey rain.

That was the start of it.

From the wasteland soared distinct voices,
Not mystical tones from heavenly spheres,
But the dry moans of rusted shackles
Wrestling to sustain restless colliers,
And orchestrated with perverted constancy
By the entrapped groans of tired bodies.
Above the wasteland, Dock View Road
Played a scene of abrupt human dispersal.
Urged by the siren’s martial call,
A thousand men, grimy with sweat,
Escaped their personal Tartarus.
A human deluge seeking brief refuge
Swept all before it. Mothers and children
Scattered and ceded the street
To the ebb and flow of a good natured tide
Of exuberant humanity.
Dock View road held its breath and awaited,
With patience, the next martial call.
In the hour, the siren again played its dreary note
To shatter the calm of short won silence.
Regretful of the sad wailing of time lost,
The slide of coal continued to the pier.
A Mahlerian symphony of metallic phonics,
Anguished, but completely compelling.
Dock View road again held its breath
And awaited with patience the next martial call.

Will there be an end to it?

Barry dock station now in silence sits
Embedded in a deserted scrubland
Built from the destruction of the past.
Once the proud centre of frenzied activity
Buffeted by the movement of coal,
It proffered a service for seafarers,
To travel home from a myriad destinations,
But was also venue of a thousand trades
Where all things had their price.
Today, diesels trundle lonely tracks
To halt at the little shed to hear
Traffic murmuring and gulls calling,
With little else to remind us of the bold past.

This is the end of it!

2007-02-27T09:14:00.000-08:00

Darry Island Signal Digital Image by Geraldus John

2007-02-27T09:06:00.000-08:00

Cadoxton Station by Geraldus John

Cadoxton station. Long time
Journeyman now at rest
High above the lonely moor.
Below the lacquered hill
Platforms bear silent witness
To a myriad lights that thrill.
Within a contortion of vibrant voltage,
As if from a shattered rainbow,
A joyous nuance dazzles the eye,
Vermilion, verdigris, mauve, sienna,
Virulent with shimmering light,
To defy and confuse the serenity of night.

Below this vital canopy
Spreads a vast still life,
But can anything there be still?
For behind it runs the rolling road
Of the roller coaster hill,
Cataclysmic shapes form gaunt fissures
In ephemeral beds of steam,
And skeletal cranes sweep spectral limbs
Each sleep walking a vivid dream.

I raise my head above the blaze,
To gaze at what was once a wet and lonely place,
And conjure up dreams of St. Gatwg’s lore,
And of old Tregatwg,
His dwelling place upon the friendless shore.

2007-02-27T08:46:00.000-08:00

Barry Island Station by Shirley Anne Owen

2007-02-27T03:50:00.000-08:00

Barry Stations
A SoundPoem by Geraldus John

Barry station, hushed in silence,
Blind as bat windows scan the rails,
Around the curve a two-note prescience
Warns arrival of the clanking beast of Wales.
If raw metal grinds raw metal
Tribology rules Okay,
And when the flier takes Barry’s sharp corner
Forces centrifugal come into play.
Distrust that silence that follows raw violence
And the shock of its juddering might,
For with its crass and spread-eagled dithering,
The flier ever destroys the peace of the night.
A clatter of silence arrests the broad platform,
Soon to be broken by the patter of feet
Of the one and only, lonely traveller
Who has, once again, not a soul to meet.
Last train of the day and no ceremony greets
The lonely flier with the cold empty seats.
Its entry, in splendour, was largely ignored,
And there’s no one outside to clamber aboard.

With no real reason to stay at its unwelcome post,
The flier horns two-fingered signals to its ungracious host,
Then with creaks and groans and strangulated squeals,
With brakes partially released from impatient wheels,
It grinds from the platform with a series of bounds,
As the night air shivers to the clash of discordant sounds.

Barry station again in hushed silence,
As blind as bat windows survey the rails,
While far down the rail a two-noted prescience
Heralds the departure of the clanking beast of Wales.

2007-02-27T03:43:00.000-08:00

Barry Station by Shirley Anne Owen

2007-02-27T03:20:00.000-08:00

Rail Journey to Barry by Geraldus John

See how they hurried from hill and from vale,
They poured out of Maerdy, Trehafod, Ferndale,
Travelling together, with each one a sinner,
Our Alfie, big Alec and Boyo from Brynna.
With silence descending on hillsides and vales,
The centre of gravity was changing in Wales
Eight hundred youngsters packed in that long train,
While out in the gloaming it tipped down with rain.

With a series of jerks, and a blast of the horn,
Off went the engine through the dank dismal morn
And then a loud cheer nearly tore it apart,
As Boyo’s well aimed core hit a man in a cart.
Then the carriage resounded to a bedlam of noise
Of cheers from the girls and a groan from the boys
With their outing to Barry at last under way
Thoughts turned to the wonders of wild Whitmore Bay.

To the coast, a glorious lifting ride and on its journey back,
How fast it roared, so straight it soared along the iron track,
They roundly bypassed Castell Coch a-gazing down from high.
And neatly dodged the sinister Garth, ominous in lead lined sky.
Leaving behind the shade of vale, and quitting the well-loved hill
They came upon the flatlands, where even the air stays still,
Then in a flash of blinding light with blue skies overhead
They saw the brilliant hue of Barry Isle and cried………
Full steam straight ahead!

2007-02-27T03:12:00.000-08:00

2007-02-27T03:07:00.000-08:00

Halloween Ghost Train by Steve Hitchens

Locomotive graveyard.
A rusted diesel drum
and on the trees the leaves are rusting.

The air is oil and tar and grease.
The floor, sticky black.
The bones are polished copper,
gears and gauges, bits of engine,
cables and spanners and lamps.
See-thru men in overalls,
flat caps and bobble hats,
up ladders, hanging up
cobwebs and rubber bats.

Paint pots balanced on planks of wood,
saying: Fry’s Chocolate, Brooke Bond Tea.
Workshops for ghosts.

2007-02-27T03:02:00.000-08:00

2007-02-27T02:28:00.000-08:00

Brittle stars by Steve Hitchens

1

Orangewhite, pinkwhite,
bluewhite lights linger like
birds on the retina flocking in patterns –
form letters: form words:

2

At night the petrol plant
morphs from solid to gas –
a hazy halo always spiralling outward.

3

Green light gleams on the tracks.
Wheels squeal into platform.
All is yellow inside.

4

Yellow sky through a crosshatch of charred rafters.
Her red hair smelt of bonfire in the cold.

5

The liquid twittering of tits and finches
zapping and pulsing in birches and pines.

6

Two spiders paw their webs
between striplight and CCTV camera,
reflected in a stream of piss.

7

Dangling from lamppost,
like a thumb
or
jellybean,
a liquid bulb of amber
larval in its plastic casing.

8

Neon you are brighter than pigment,
filament deeper than my retina.

2007-02-27T02:20:00.000-08:00

2007-02-27T02:04:00.000-08:00

The Train Journey by Hanah Gray
It’s cold and the air I breathe turns to clouds of dust
We sit alone staring at the tracks
Waiting for our train to take us to separate destinations

The train approaches, smoothly, silently and chugs along the track

A silent carriage, silent people, heads lulling forward in silent sleep

Intermittent rings of phones and the rumble of music drowns people’s ears,
polluting the stuffy air with noise

Screens of green flow past me and a murky damp sky loom’s over my head

In their standard seats, men on laptops looking important in Asda check shirts

The chavs with their bottles of coke chat loudly to mates in trainers, hoodies and
bad accents. Swearing loudly about their “missus” who goes dancing everynight.

The train slows down and my heart sounds in my chest like the excitable screech
of breakes. I drag my blue airline bag off into the damp cold clear air and walk
quickly with the traffic to go and receive my kiss.