Failures and Repetitions:
Aled Simons, Bláithín Mac Donnell, GWENBA, Katarina Ranković and Tom Cardew.

13-23 January 2022
Saturday - Sunday 11-5pm
Preview: Thursday 6-9pm 13 January ....................................................................................................................................................................................

When I was at primary school, I would walk around in a little suit and tie carrying a little
briefcase and demand that the kids in my class sign contracts placing themselves in my debt
financially, materially and most importantly, spiritually. I would bang my fist on the table at the
same time as making my way through those gobstoppers that were, realistically, too big for
an eight year old. I was a strange boy. SPaG (spelling, punctuation and grammar) wasn’t my
strong suit. I was better at compound interest and quantitative easing. The contracts with my
‘clients’ quickly backfired. My form teacher found a loophole in the small print. I remember
that big, wide grin on his face. I thought I’d recited the Welsh poem, “Mynd i'r Dre,” correctly.
Little did I know, then and there, that I would be in the debt of my classmates long into the
future. But, rather than quit whilst I was marginally behind, I did it all over again. And again.
And again. Year 5. Year 6. Year 7. It was a heady drug. A compulsion. I loved nothing more
than shouting “deal or no deal” into the faces of the other pupils in my formclass. Through
those years, my interest in smallprint, unfortunately, did not flourish. I was too busy getting
those sweet deals. I couldn’t resist. My debts swelled. I ended up in the pocket of hundreds
of little, yet proportionally similar sized bastards. They’d won. I’d lost. But, I always tried
again. Always on the wrong side of success. Always with my little briefcase in hand.

You might have realised that I’m not great at describing curatorial themes. You might take
the above as a subtext of sorts as to why I have brought together this group of artists
working in performance of improvised and scripted stories that dance with failure, and repeat
their own interests.

Curated (and childhood debts) by Tom Cardew and Aled Simons. 

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Artist Profiles...

Aled Simons. Half-forgotten heirlooms and the misremembered. Past, present and future all at once.
Performative whims born of pseudoscience, bedroom witchcraft and misinterpreted ritual, an impulse
that becomes compulsion - all filtered through a childhood dressing-up box. This is Aled Simons’
practice. Imagine a dream in which you strip naked in the living room of your grandparent’s council
house. You are nude, jumping from armchair to settee, then from settee back to armchair singing
Lady in Red by Chris De Burgh or Cliff Richard’s Living Doll - the one with The Young Ones. This is
also Aled Simons’ practice.
www.aledsimons.com
@aled.simons
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Working with spoken word performance Bláithín Mac Donnell’s work seeks to fix an image in the
specifics of time, place and narrative. Currently a PhD researcher at NCAD exploring Storytelling in
the digital age, Mac Donnell holds an MA Photography from The Royal College of Art and a BA Fine
Art from Goldsmiths London.
http://www.blaithinmacdonnell.com
@blaithinmacdonnell
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GWENBA is a multidisciplinary artist [new:media] artist currently based in South Wales. Her work
explores the relationship between organic and virtual spaces, forming digital growths from the earth’s
core with performance, sound, video and text experiments. She is interested in exploring
communication and connection through the digital realm, mimicking the forms of Nature to deliver a
complex and layered narrative rich in dark humour, laid over a phantasmagoria of homespun alien-like
forms.
https://www.gwenba.com/
@g.wenba
-
Katarina Ranković is an artist whose work originates from an itching longing to shapeshift into the
things she admires and envies. These include: Cyrano de Bergerac, Barbarella, the tentacles of deep
sea monsters, majestic fractals, and more. In her practice she is using empathy to momentarily steal
the power of these foreign and impressive things, whether through drawing, writing or performance.
http://www.katarinarankovic.art
@rankovic.k
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Tom Cardew’s film, installation & writing practice processes and explores tacit societal structures of
competitive and comparative worth, meditating upon the markers, myths and materials that shape
them.
https://www.tomcardew.co.uk
@cardewgram