David Garner Interview

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.