Changing Faces - ACE251.3

Views of Swansea dockyard, redeveloped, after it closed and became derelict, as the Swansea Maritime Quarter. Robin Campbell, Special Projects Officer for the Swansea Development, together with his team. Campbell VO talking about their work as designers and commissioners of art and artefacts in the city, consciously intended to relate to the history of the area. Many of their designs and the resulting pieces. Commentary suggests that their major work is The Tower of the Ecliptic (1993). Campbell VO says the design deliberately echoes the lighthouses round the coast of Britain, but that the project evolved into an astronomical tower, incorporating a 500mm telescope. Fixing two decorative heads to poles on the façade. Campbell with Robert Conybear. Campbell explains that this is the first project on which he’s been able to involve other artists at an early stage. Conybear points out that the two glass fibre and galvanised steel heads – The Day Looking Through the Clouds – have open eyes which means that the sky seen through them becomes part of the work. Conybear describes the female figure carrying ellipses which he made for the top of the tower, and which moves around with the wind. Interior of the Tower showing the light patterns created in the stairway by dichromic glass panels made by David Pearl. Pearl at work, and describing his collaboration with Campbell. More views of the glass panels and their patterns. Exterior of the Tower showing the telescope dome, the elliptic statue, and the glass panels. Conybear shows some relief panels depicting a space ship and Pegasus. Campbell on the hazards of the discussion process. Identifying and decorative panels outside the Tower, engraved with words, in English and Welsh, by local poet, Nigel Jenkins. Jenkins explaining his texts to some visitors. Conybear on the collaboration with Campbell, and on his own work as "a penumbra compiler" or sculptor. Stonemason carving the frame of a panel; Conybear VO some of the reliefs. VO talks about the Mumbles lighthouse, and the "dialogue" he’s created between it and the neon installation in his "Ark Lighthouse" (Lighthouse Tower Sculpture) (1988). Campbell VO describes the designs on the doors of the Sea Cadets store. Campbell VO describes his collecting of "visually or symbolically crazy" objects, and the need to respond to and respect history. Campbell says that the work he’s been doing is also a response to place or source, and shows the guide he’s produced to some of the pieces in the area, though he doesn’t believe that public art programmes should necessarily give answers. Final shots of the bay and the Tower. Credits over.