John Selway (1938-2017)
Drawing on history and literature, John Selway’s work blends reality, memory and fantasy, often with challenging results.
Born in Askern, Yorkshire in 1938, his family returned to Abertillery in 1941, where he would spend most of his life. As a teenager, he attended Newport College of Art, recalling the winding daily bus journeys through the industrial landscape of the South Wales Valleys.
In 1959, he began three years at the Royal College of Art in London. Under the tutelage of Mark Rothko and studying alongside the likes of David Hockney, Peter Blake and R.B. Kitaj, Selway was immersed in the exciting new developments in post-war Western art.
Selway chose to return to Abertillery after his studies despite the admiration of his peers and a burgeoning career in London. Whilst his fellow artists made the most of the city’s lucrative art market or emigrated to the States in pursuit of global acclaim, Selway opted for quiet obscurity in his much-loved valley.
Selway taught at Newport College of Art for more than 25 years before retiring in 1991. He was a part of the 56 Group Wales, an artist-led organisation that aimed to promote Welsh modernist art, with the likes of Eric Malthouse, Heinz Koppel and Ernest Zobole.
He continued working up until his death in 2017.
Social Context
The 1960s accelerated a period of change for the communities of the south Wales coalfield.
Selway’s local colliery, Six Bells, was the site of a disaster in 1960 when 45 men died at the coalface. Selway, as all those living in the coalfield, was all too familiar with the danger of the work. In 1966, the Aberfan disaster, in which 114 children and 28 adults died, made undeniable the danger of the fractured landscape.
At the same time, early pit mergers and closures confirmed the beginning of a period of decline for the industry. The mining communities now faced both the threat of living alongside the mines and living without them.
The Great Welsh Coal War
It was amongst this backdrop that Selway created his ‘The Great Welsh Coal War’ series in 1969 commissioned by the Arts Council of Wales. These preliminary designs capture the uncertainty and raw emotion of that time.
Outlined with orange tape, notes on colour and subject are jotted around the edges. Different elements are secured with glue or tape as Selway worked through his design, making the most of the space. While he is better known for his figurative works, as a young artist in the 1960s Selway experimented with abstraction. Here, his use of abstraction creates a dreamlike version of reality.
The content of the works is a combination of harrowing imagery and scenes of community. Coal tips morph into pyramids – a great monument to a once booming industry, or a tomb memorialising the lives lost? Below, tortured figures, isolated in space, seemingly return to the earth.
In other designs, hope persists through a child’s dream or a couple reclining in the hills. A Sunday school matriarch oversees a table laid with food and groups of people blend into monolithic, immovable forms. Amongst the suffering, Selway captures the strength and power of a community come together. It is this strength that would be on full display in the turbulent decades that followed.
View the entire Great Welsh Coal War series, and more artworks by John Selway.
Maddie Webb is Amgueddfa Cymru’s Curator of Works on Paper. Over the past few years, she has been overseeing the digitisation process. Previously a Curatorial Assistant, Maddie has always been focused on making art accessible for everyone.