IS THIS / THIS IS… Cerys Thomas-Ford


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Cerys Thomas-Ford’s practice is predominantly text and performance based. Her work focuses on creating an idealised condition for the unattainable. She creates ambiguous spaces between fiction and reality within her work, often using ephemeral acts and materials to construct tenuous narratives where the boundaries between ‘truth’ and ‘fantasy’ are undefined.
She is intrigued by the notion that space is a construct of our individual experience, as opposed to anything that exists in reality.
“… men fancy places, traces, and spaces; though these things consist only in the truth of relations, and not at all in any absolute reality.” Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz.

Recently, Cerys has worked site-specifically, amalgamating the physically present with a constant psychic narrative, culminating in stream of consciousness live writing acts and spoken word which she has performed in various locations, most recently across the city of Venice as part of her invigilation at the Wales in Venice/ Cymru yn Fenis exhibit at the Biennale, 2015. Her work has often been spontaneous, interventions in landscape, using what is available to leave a psychic imprint on the physical, aiming to question our mapping of space and place.

The IS THIS/ THIS IS space has afforded Cerys the opportunity to work on a larger scale. To continue to react to space and place, but to take the time to transform these reactions into a wider context. Cerys began the residency by responding to sound, thought and feelings in real time and blurring this with her constant psychic narrative.
The residency has allowed Cerys to reflect on her initial live writing acts, and to develop these spontaneous reactions into a deeper manipulation of space. After filling the residency space with words, she has worked to erase and enlarge, only leaving behind fragments, just as we only ever see fragments of each other’s psychic space. It is also a space which can be experienced and constructed differently by each viewer, just as all spaces and places are interpreted individually.

Cerys will be performing as part of her IS THIS/ THIS IS artist talk, from 6pm onwards.