'Come and See What the Arts of the World Are Saying to Us' ; with Just Days to Go Until the Winner of This Year's Artes Mundi Prize Is Revealed, Arts Council of Wales Chairman Dai Smith Reveals Here Why the Visual Arts Are so Important to Us

Western Mail › May 15, 2010

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Summary

WHEN I was a boy in the Rhondda in the '50s a visit to the pictures was a stumble in the dark with only the flickering beam of a torch to guide you to your seat.

What was on the screen was the nearest most of us in Wales ever came to anything resembling art. Our horizons were limited and very distant from our life experience.

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Extract

'Come and See What the Arts of the World Are Saying to Us' ; with Just Days to Go Until the Winner of This Year's Artes Mundi Prize Is Revealed, Arts Council of Wales Chairman Dai Smith Reveals Here Why the Visual Arts Are so Important to Us

Times have changed. Last summer I stumbled in the dark again, and this time with no torch to pick out a pathway through a lightless former brewery turned makeshift gallery. But I had put away childish things by now and the reward, in the Arts Council of Wales' Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, was the revelation of Joh...

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