Explore Diffusion Festival exhibitions with interactive tours made by 4π Productions

A Million Mutinies Later India / Wales 

Interview with John Rea 

CONCRÈTE: A SONIC INTERVENTION

Explore Diffusion Festival exhibitions with interactive tours made by 4π Productions

Born Nowhere / Born Now Here Llais Pontes

Explore Diffusion Festival exhibitions with interactive tours made by 4π Productions

Peace Signs Edward Barber 

Explore Diffusion Festival exhibitions with interactive tours made by 4π Productions

State of the Nations Kennardphillipps

Explore Diffusion Festival exhibitions with interactive tours made by 4π Productions

Rab Harling is a London-based contemporary artist and film maker who investigates the social occupation of space, focusing on how people construct a sense of place, and how the design of built environments reflects and actively produces particular social configurations and political ideologies. Harling’s work intersects with a long-term debate in urban culture and policy regarding the relationships between environment and behaviour, particularly in the context of the current housing crisis in the United Kingdom. His practice-based research has a particular focus on the effects of gentrification on the vulnerable, and in particular on the socially excluded and insecurely housed.

Marcelo Brodsky is an Argentine artist and human rights activist, working with images and documents of specific events to investigate broader social, political and historical issues. In 1968 – the Fire of Ideas Brodsky features archival images of student and worker demonstrations around the world, carefully annotated by hand in order to deconstruct what lay behind worldwide social turbulence in the late 1960s. Images of anti-Vietnam war demonstrations in London and Tokyo sit alongside protests in Bogota, Rio de Janeiro, Mexico, Prague and San Paolo against military regimes and oppressive government structures. For decades, Brodsky owned and directed a photo agency with offices throughout Latin America. His sophisticated understanding of picture editing, of how they are sequenced changes the way audiences read images, enables him to use text and graphical devices in association with each image to shift the viewer’s perspective and to reveal new layers of meaning.

This project is an investigation into the industrial site of the British Nylon Spinners at Mamhilad near Pontypool, which was built as a high-tech facility for the production of nylon thread, a man-made fabric developed by DuPont in the 1930s. Built in 1948, the factory was designed by architect Sir Percy Thomas and, at the height of nylon production in the 1960s, it was estimated that nearly 10,000 people worked throughout this vast industrial complex.

In common with other new technology industries based on research and development, the plastics industry was associated with technological advancements that would lead to the material enhancement in the lives of ordinary people. The development of new man made fabrics, plastics and chemicals were credited with helping to lighten the burden of everyday domestic chores and promised a new world of comfort and convenience.

The exhibition shows contemporary images taken at the Mamhilad factory over the last three years, together with historical archive images and films on the manufacturing process of nylon from the Pontypool Museum Archive. The workforce at Mamhilad shared a faith in the benefits of scientific and technological progress and felt they were contributing to a promise held by society at large that all subsequent generations might look forward to a future characterised by material and social improvement. Through the presentation of these diverse threads of testimony we can perceive the aspirations of a generation that hoped to create a new and better society, a bright new social fabric for everyone.

Bay Art

Explore Diffusion Festival exhibitions with interactive tours made by 4π Productions

David Garner is developing a new work for Diffusion, Tears, looking at Nye Bevan’s legacy, inspired by an archival photograph depicting Bevan rubbing his eyes, as if weeping at the dismantling of the National Health Service, whose establishment he spearheaded. Tears will be sited as an intervention in the National Museum Cardiff, alongside 19th Century paintings and artefacts in one of the art galleries. Between the stammer and le mot juste features the only two remaining speeches by Aneurin Bevan sourced and then reconfigured into twenty five segments, in order to emphasise the significance and stress the importance of the NHS and the need for a just society in the narrative.

In Respond, the artist presents two contemporary works that link the Chartist movement with the current austerity climate in South Wales. In one of these, Pennies for the People, an ornate chandelier, a symbol of decadence associated with opulent lifestyles, is constructed from 576 coins with a monetary value of a mere £11.52. Each coin has been hand stamped with bilingual words relating to the media vocabulary of austerity.

Victoria is a Producer at Watershed, where she designs and delivers creative labs and artistsʼ residency opportunities within the Pervasive Media Studio. Victoria has a background is visual art and previously co-produced projects as part of the Collect, a loose affiliation of creative producers working out the role and nature of collaboration through the act of collaboration itself.

For several years, Diane Meyer has been working on a series of hand embroidered photographs following the entire 104 mile circumference of the Berlin Wall. Sections of the image have been obscured by cross- stitch embroidery sewn directly into the photograph. The embroidery is made to resemble pixels and borrows the visual language of digital imaging in an analog, handmade process. 

In addition to the physical aspects that point to the former division of the city, Meyer was interested in the psychological weight of these sites and the ways in which past history remains very much in the present. By having the embroidery take the form of digital pixels, Meyer makes a connection between forgetting and digital file corruption. Her interest lies in the porous nature of memory as well the means by which photography transforms history into nostalgic objects that obscure objective understandings of the past.

The Angel 

Explore Diffusion Festival exhibitions with interactive tours made by 4π Productions

In The Icon/The Star, Slovenian artist Bojan Radovič examines how the five-pointed star as a revolutionary symbol is appropriated and re-used in a contemporary globalised world. With the fall of the Berlin wall and the demise of communism in Europe, the red star is progressively emptied of its ‘original’ meaning. Today, as time passes, the star symbol simply floats around different countries and brands, in various advertising and consumer contexts. Radovič points to this shifting of the meaning of the star as the consequence of the capitalist process of re-branding, which slowly and steadily divests the red star of its historical and revolutionary power. Rather than simply observing this phenomenon, the artist highlights a revolutionary symbol that is caught in the process of being assimilated into the easy consumerist world of capitalism and emptied of its past socialism. Radovič is also concerned with how the act of photographing the star in such contexts prompts new ways of seeing the image and thinking about its meaning. Unfettered from its more indexical meaning, the red star signifies things other than itself, as part of a wider system of signs.

Ffotogallery @ Turner House

Explore Diffusion Festival exhibitions with interactive tours made by 4π Productions

Delhi: Communities of Belonging chronicles contemporary LGBTQ life in Delhi. Sunil Gupta and Charan Singh’s project enables us to witness the intimate, ordinary and loving moments of seventeen diverse individuals and couples. Gupta and Singh have created a rich and tender mosaic of the ways in which the subjects navigate life, work and love in a country where anti-sodomy laws dating back to the British Empire were only recently struck down in 2009 and then were restored after the Supreme Court turned back the ruling in 2013.

Gupta and Singh have photographed an array of friendship networks accentuating human warmth through the thoughtful dialogue that departs from a pre-supposed victim narrative of queer lives.

The Jamaica-born ‘godfather of black British photography’ spent the 70s and 80s documenting street protests in the city. His work can be seen at Cardiff’s Diffusion festival until 31 May. 

See the full feature here.

A new book by The Caravan Gallery commemorates their hugely popular Cardiff Pride of Place Project which took place at The Abacus during Diffusion 2015. This full colour pocket size publication is a creative response to Cardiff and contains examples of artwork, written observations and memorabilia contributed by visitors to the exhibition. Find out how what's really typical of Cardiff  ('Being atypical'), discover Welsh multicultural cuisine (a Caerphilly Cheese and Leek Bhaji) and how people describe Cardiff (''Like a village that got out of hand''). This unique and sometimes hilarious insight into the Welsh capital also contains photographs of Cardiff by The Caravan Gallery artists Jan Williams and Chris Teasdale.

Unit 15 @ Mermaid Quay

Explore Diffusion Festival exhibitions with interactive tours made by 4π Productions

Cyanotypes Workshop | Lo-Fi Photography
Sunday 21st May

Learn how to make your own Cyanotype print, using Lo-Fi Photography techniques with Andy Pearsall of USW. Based in the South Wales Valleys - Andy Pearsall (Course Leader for BA Photojournalism – USW) has an interest in Victorian photographic processes.

The Cyanotype process was invented by the Astronomer - Sir John Herschel in 1842, and was used by Botanist Anna Atkins in 1843 to create the first photographically illustrated book. 

The Munitions Factory @ The Sustainable Studio

Explore Diffusion Festival exhibitions with interactive tours made by 4π Productions

Third culture clash: Mehdi Bahmed's identity crisis – in pictures

With troubling, dreamlike compositions, French photographer Mehdi Bahmed conveys the awkwardness of being caught between western and Arab identity.

Photographer Mehdi Bahmed uses staged images to probe the tensions between the western and Arab worlds – and the experience of living between the two. His series Entre­-Deux is showing at Diffusion: Cardiff international festival of photography, Millennium Centre, until 31 May. All images: Mehdi Bahmed.

Woodblock Prints from Digital Images. Interview with CSAD Tutor: Laura Welsman

A comprehensive guide to producing your own documentary project.

Photographer Lee Stow, in association with Wales For Peace and Ffotogallery, discusses her experiences from working on 'Poppies: Women, War, and Peace,' and shares advice for young photographers who plan to develop a strong and coherent documentary project. Lee's insights and tips give professional context to our step-by-step practical guide and video.

Explore Diffusion Festival exhibitions with interactive tours made by 4π Productions 

A special exhibition at the Wales Millennium Centre, Zeitgeist, features work submitted in response to Diffusion’s global Open Call. The aim is to capture the spirit of our times, highlight what is really going on, offer new insights and solutions, and challenge the status quo. With our various news feeds latterly dominated by Brexit, Trumpism, climate change, poverty, religious intolerance, the migrant and refugee crisis, border control and gentrification, Zeitgeist will interrogate what this all means for the individual and society moving forward.

Image /Llun © Nothing To Worry About James Hudson / Entre-Deux (Interval) Mehdi Bahmed

To explore the projects and featured submissions online, visit: zeitgeist.diffusionfestival.org

The Children of Radnor Road primary school make their thoughts about today’s politics clear in their brilliant poem and animation.  

The film was made by Ffotogallery working with poet Rosey Brown, & Radnor Primary School in partnership with A2 Connect: Arts And Education Network Central South as part of the Tidy! 2017 project.  

For more information about this project and A2 Connect please go to A2connect.org

Today we took #Diffusion2017 Hijack live and have hijacked some local instagram accounts to get people discussing #revolution

Take a look and get involved on Instagram

College Gwent students visit Diffusion, with talk from Rowan Lear

A photography festival featuring more than 60 artists from across the world has descended on Cardiff for a month-long programme of exhibitions and events across the city .

Read the article here

1968: The Fire of Ideas by Marcelo Brodsky and Taking Liberties by John 'Hoppy' Hopkins at ffotogallery Turner House

Ffotogallery is proud to present the third edition of Diffusion, a biennial festival of world class photography and contemporary art featuring over 60 artists in a month long programme of exhibitions, events and activities

Diffusion 2017 looks at REVOLUTION in its widest context, investigating social change, freedom of expression, popular protest, human rights and the pursuit of utopias through the prism of photography and lens-based media.

The month-long Diffusion festival brings photography from around the world to venues across Cardiff.

Esther Hovers’ False Positives features intelligent surveillance systems – cameras that are able to detect deviant behaviour within public spaces, questioning the normality of human behaviour in a globalised world. This is realised through eight “anomalies”, which become signs of body language or movement that could indicate criminal intent to passersby, or voyeurs of the photograph.

Download our Diffusion Festival Map

Amak Mahmoodian (b.1980) is an Iranian photographer, filmmaker and curator living in the UK, whose work questions identity. Her latest series, Shenasnemeh, is on display this month as part of Diffusion Festival at Ffotogallery, Cardiff, looking at the deeper complexities of identity, personhood and an intersection between the personal with the universal. “Shenasnameh” is the name of the official Iranian Birth Certificate. It is valid for life, but the photograph which it contains must be updated according to the standards. For a woman in Iran, the making of this photograph is a personally charged affair; her hair must be covered in keeping with official standards, and any excess of make-up will be met with official disapproval.

In State of the Nations, specially commissioned for Diffusion 2017, resistance to the status quo is embedded in the deconstruction of news images and narratives built from everyday materials, photomontage and text. kennardphillipps dig into the surface of words and images to visualise the connection between the oppressed majority and the political and financial elites of the everyday, remixing earlier work and creating new artwork addressing contemporary issues relating to Trump, Brexit, the refugee and migrant crisis and nuclear proliferation.

The Munitions Factory @ The Sustainable Studio 

Photographs by Arran Davis

A special exhibition at the Wales Millennium Centre, Zeitgeist, features work submitted in response to Diffusion’s global Open Call. The aim is to capture the spirit of our times, highlight what is really going on, offer new insights and solutions, and challenge the status quo. With our various news feeds latterly dominated by Brexit, Trumpism, climate change, poverty, religious intolerance, the migrant and refugee crisis, border control and gentrification, Zeitgeist will interrogate what this all means for the individual and society moving forward.

Ffotogallery have teamed up with I Loves the Diff to bring photography to the people of Cardiff. We have re-purposed 8 vending machines and placed them around the city. Each Ffotomatic vending machine sells limited edition collectable cartons containing miniature artworks and other goodies. Share your #ffotomatic discoveries online.

Download the Diffusion Festival newspaper for 2017

The Glass Work invites you to take a photograph and hear it as a soundscape played on its six glass gongs.

Each photo sounds very different.  It's nearly impossible, but see if you can guess what each one you hear was of.

Take your own photo and have a go! 

1. Take a photograph on your phone, tablet or laptop 

2. Using Twitter - create a post with your photo and hashtag #theglasswork  

3. Send your post

The Glass Work will automatically receive your tweet, start playing and tweet you back.

It works out what to play by looking at the colours in each pixel of the photo and playing the gong that corresponds to that shade.  Lights flash to show you exactly which colour has been detected.

Enjoy your music! Remember to tag @_diffusion!

The Saturday Girl pop-up portrait studio is touring the UK in 2017, collecting portraits of young women and the playful and powerful ways we express ourselves. We’re visiting towns and cities on Saturdays where people are out to meet friends, shop, hang out, to see and be seen.

A new book by The Caravan Gallery commemorates their hugely popular Cardiff Pride of Place Project which took place at The Abacus during Diffusion 2015. This full colour pocket size publication is a creative response to Cardiff and contains examples of artwork, written observations and memorabilia contributed by visitors to the exhibition. Find out how what's really typical of Cardiff  ('Being atypical'), discover Welsh multicultural cuisine (a Caerphilly Cheese and Leek Bhaji) and how people describe Cardiff (''Like a village that got out of hand''). This unique and sometimes hilarious insight into the Welsh capital also contains photographs of Cardiff by The Caravan Gallery artists Jan Williams and Chris Teasdale.

Edward Barber's wall graphic, Mind Map of Nuclear Protest, created specifically for the exhibition Peace Signs at the Imperial War Museum London (26 May - 4 September 2016) contextualises his photographs of anti-nuclear protests mounted by the British Peace Movement in the 1980s. 

Laís Pontes is a London-based photographic artist exploring the manifold ways that characters are developed and constructed on social media platforms. Inspired by the multiculturalism of her home country Brazil, Pontes investigates the notion of social media as an extension of the self and the fluidity of identity in contemporary society. To this end, the artist uses her own body and life to stage experiments on various social networking sites such as Facebook, Instagram and OkCupid. Her process allows others to directly contribute to the creation of the work, encouraging viewers to develop a critical view of social media and its effects on our everyday lives.

The opening of 1968: The Fire of Ideas by Marcelo Brodsky and Taking Liberties by John 'Hoppy' Hopkins at ffotogallery Turner House

Thursday 4 May 2017

Photographs by Phil Scully 

Download the Diffusion Festival programme for 2017

The official launch of Diffusion Festival at the Coal Exchange Hotel 

Thursday 4 May 2017

Photographs by Phil Scully