EASTWOOD, Paul, Wrth Ymyl y ffin © Paul Eastwood, Photography by Rhian Israel
Inscribed upon the face of a roughly-shaped rock is a text in runic alphabet, known as Coelbren y Beirdd. This script was invented by the Welsh antiquarian, bard and stonemason Edward Williams, better known as Iolo Morganwg, in the eighteenth century. Eastwood appropriates Morganwg’s forged bardic alphabet to create ambiguous messages from a fictional past. Additionally, he focuses on the framing devices utilized by museums to display historical objects. Often overlooked, these devices possess an aesthetic language of their own, while modes of exhibition also incorporate disciplinary, knowledge-ordering, and colonial discourses. Eastwood reconceives frames as discreet artworks, each one custom-built to house unique artefacts.
Paul Eastwood is a Wales-based visual artist who treats art as a form of material storytelling. His work creates imagined histories and futures to investigate how spaces, artefacts, and memory communicate identities. Eastwood is a fluent speaker of Welsh and draws inspiration from Welsh culture, which he approaches from a global perspective. Language – fleeting or imprinted, natural or invented, hegemonic or minority – is a constant object and medium of his practice.
