Vivian Ross-Smith

Teimladwyedd
Feelabilities
Dylan Huw

Mae’r gwaith yn ymgais i feddalu gofodau caled. Mae’r gwaith yn cynnig ffyrdd o wneud cyrff i deimlo’n gartrefol, wedi’u gofalu amdanynt, mewn lleoliadau (oriel wen, tirwedd greigiog) a chyflyrrau (bywyd/gwaith, bywyd/heddiw) o anesmwythdod ac anhawster.

Mae craig wedi ei gorchuddio mewn petroleum jelly yn datgan ei hunan wrth i chi grwydro trwy’r goedwig-arddangosfa; gwrthrych yn dynodi solidrwydd di-oes, wedi ei droi’n flasus gan y sylwedd o welliant bob-dydd. Ydy’r lleithder yn gwneud i ti deimlo’n gyfforddus? Ydy e’n rhoi’r ick i ti?

Cyffyrdda’r gwaith: ydy dy wefus di’n sych?

Mae holl waith Vivian Ross-Smith yn gyffwrddadwy, yn wahoddiadol: mae’n gofyn pethau o’r person sydd yn ei bresenoldeb ac yn hamddenol am y syniad o gael unrhyw beth ‘nol. Pan mae Vivian yn dweud bod ei gwaith yn mynnu bod y gynulleidfa’n rhyngweithio’n uniongyrchol, mae’n meddwl hyn yn llythrennol: plîs, bydd yn y gwaith, gorffwysa dy gorff ar y gwaith, rho dy ddwylo ym mhocedi’r gwaith. Mae’r gwaith yn ymwybodol o ba mor hollbresennol yw rhethregau o ofal/care yn y byd celf heddiw ac yn gwthio’n erbyn rhesymeg y ‘tro’ hwnnw o unigolyddiaeth neoryddfrydol; yn gynsail i egwyddorion artistig Vivian mae’r blynyddoedd treuliodd fel gweithiwr gofal, ac hefyd gan ddeialogau hir-dymor amrywiol gyda ffrindiau a chyfoedion am sut i wreiddio ymdeimlad o ofal ac aml-ochredd wrth weithio mewn (gan weithio yn erbyn) systemau sy’n mynnu’n bod ni’n aberthu’n lles a’n asiantaeth casglebol i fod yn gyfalafwyr bach da.

Y gwaith, y gwaith, y gwaith. Gad i mi beidio a chyfeirio at y gwaith o hyn ymlaen, er mae’n wir heb os bod arddangosfa, a holl bractis, Vivian yn cael ei animeiddio gan archwiliad o waith, h.y. llafur, yr artist, mewn llinell syth o’i phroffesiynau blaenorol. Gad i mi ymestyn fy ngeirfa fy hun i synhwyro fy ffordd trwy’r hyn mae’r gwaith yn ymgorffori. Yn gyffredinol, dwi’n tueddu i osgoi mynd yn rhy agos at gelf sy’n datgan ei gyffwrdd/chwaraedwyedd. Efallai mai ymgais yw’r darn hwn i ddod i ddeall, felly, beth sy’n gwneud gwaith Vivian yn wahanol; beth amdano sy’n fy ngwahodd i mewn, sy’n fy nghymell i gofleidio’r defnyddiau a’r deunyddiau sydd wedi ymgasglu gan yr artist-weithiwr gofalus.

Gad i mi, erbyn meddwl, ddileu y gair ‘ymgais’ o’r paragraff uchod. Gad i mi gyfansoddi gweddill y testun hwn pan mae’r geiriau’n dod. I beidio gorfodi’r geiriau mewn i fodolaeth ac i anrhydeddu practis Vivian gan gau’r tab a chymryd y pwysau i ffwrdd. Gad i mi weld beth fyddai’r gwaith yn ei wneud wedyn.

Mewn sgwrs yn stiwdio Vivian sydd fel arall yn llifo’n hawdd, ry’n ni’n cyrraedd saib pan dwi’n sylweddoli mod i ddim yn gwybod sut i gyfleu gair Cymraeg: teimladwy. Dwi’n esbonio bod awgrymiadau Google — touching, sensitive, impassioned — ddim yn taro deuddeg,  mai rhywbeth rhwng poignant a feelable mae’r gair yn meddwl. Dwi’n symud fy mreichiau o gwmpas wrth geisio cyfleu’r ystyr, ac mae Vivian yn hefyd. Mae’r “not-being-able-to-verbalise-thing” wedi dod lan yn ein sgwrs sawl tro, fel cymhelliad canolog i ymchwil Vivian yn Abertawe dros y flwyddyn ddiwethaf. Dyma, hefyd, beth mae’r gair yn meddwl. Mae’n cyrff yn deall ein ystumiau hyd yn oed pan does dim geirfa’n gyffredin. Wal frics. Carreg ynghanol oriel, gofod gwag yn fy ngheg.

Sut mae dogfennu neu sgwennu am beth neu bethau sydd gymaint am gydberthynas materol, a’r ffordd mae pethau’n teimlo, i fyny’n agos, tu mewn, oddi tano? Efallai (yn sicr) nid dyma’r cwestiwn mwyaf hanfodol i fod yn gofyn o’r pethau rhain na’r syniadau maen nhw’n ymgyrffori. Ond dwi wedi bod yn pendroni dros gapasiti prosesau perfformiadol o sgwennu a chreu celf i fod yn strategaethau o ymwrthod â’r ysgogiadau marchnad-gyfalafol sydd wedi eu gweu yn ein bywydau bob dydd; peidio â sgwennu/chreu i wasanaethu pwer ond i hwyluso mathau gwahanol o fywiogrwydd a swynhwyro, gwahoddiadau rhywle tu hwnt cyfyngiadau’r presennol.

Gan diwnio mewn i berfformadwyedd unrhyw amgylchedd wedi’i strwythuro gan bresenoldeb celf, rho Vivian spotlight ar ambell i ddarn. Dyma osod llwyfan i rywbeth ddigwydd: caiff yr ystum a’r (sensation), yn ddelfrydol o fathau casglebol a chilyddol, eu canoli dros wrthrychedd, pethrwydd. Mae pob darn yn perthyn i’r dyfodol agos: fel offeryn i wneud rhywbeth gyda, fel peth i’w actifyddu. Daw paentiadau’n ddillad a’n cyrff ni, edrychwyr, yn rhan o’u hecoleg gerflunol; arsylwn wrth i un darn arwain at y llall, ein cyrff wedi eu sbarduno gan goreograffi reddfol. Sonia Vivian am y corff o waith yn ffurfio cymuned, gyda’i gilydd a gyda’u cynulleidfa, sy’n amlygu eu agweddau iachaol ac adferol. Yn hyn o beth, er mor ganolog yw syniadau o fywyd a theimladwyedd i ddarnau’r artist, ychydig ond cyrff meirw ydynt tan iddynt gael eu cyffwrdd gan gynulleidfa. Beth all ddigwydd pan dawn nhw’n fyw?

Rhagfyr 2023

Teimladwyedd
Feelabilities
Dylan Huw

The work concerns itself with the softening of hard places; the artist constructs methods of making bodies comfortable and cared-for in settings (an imposing gallery, a ragged landscape) and conditions (work-life, life-life) of unease and ill-feeling.

You encounter a rock covered in petroleum jelly as you amble around the exhibition-forest, its ageless monumentality perverted — made delicious — by this signifier of low-stakes, everyday, habitual healing. Does the moisture make you feel comfortable? Does it give you the ick? 

Touch the work: are your lips feeling dry?

Vivian Ross-Smith’s work is all touchable, all invitational, all propositional: it asks things of the person encountering it and is laidback about the prospect of receiving anything in return. When Vivian describes her work as “requesting the audience interacts with the work,” and “that they enforce care on themselves and offer a sense of empathy” she means it literally, desperately so: please, rest your body on the work’s sheets, wrap yourself in the work’s blankets, put your hands in the work’s pockets. The work both speaks to the omnipresent ‘care turn’ in contemporary art and pushes back against its hollow undercurrents of late-capitalist individualism; her artistic principles are informed by years spent as a care worker, and by myriad long-term, ongoing dialogues with friends and collaborators about how to sustain principles of care and reciprocity within (and beyond the horizon of) systems which demand we sacrifice our wellbeing and agency for growth and gain.

The work, the work, the work. Let me not from this point on refer to ‘the work,’ though the work is indeed animated by deeply-sensed and sincere interrogations of the artist as labourer, as worker, a direct continuum from Vivian’s previous professions. Let me seek to stretch my own vocabulary and sense my way through some of what these things contain. My disposition is generally nervous and diminuitive, albeit less so in the presence of art, and I generally go out of my way to avoid work which announces itself as interactive, playable, otherwise intimately engageable. Vivian’s is different and this text is an effort to understand why that is; why I feel compelled to subject myself to the embrace of the fabrics and materials vivified by the careful artist-worker.

Let me, in fact, retract from the above paragraph the word “effort.” Let me compose the remainder of this text when the words come to me. Not to force them into being but to honour the work by closing the tab and getting off the hamster wheel. Let me see what the work does then.

In an otherwise free-flowing conversation in Vivian’s studio, we reach an impasse when I realise I’m drawing a blank on the English word for ‘teimladwy.’ It translates literally as feelable but to me suggests something more like poignant or deeply-felt; Google Translate gives touching, sensitive, impassioned. In trying to describe the particularity of the word I move my hands, and Vivian does too. The “not-being-able-to-verbalise thing,” as Vivian puts it, has been at the core of her thinking as she’s been in residence in Abertawe for the last year. Which is also what the word means. Our bodies understand the action even when we don't share a vocabulary. A brick wall. A rock in a gallery, an empty space in my mouth. 

How do you write about or document a thing or things so purely and intensely about the sensation of material interrelation, about what these things feel like up close and inside? Perhaps (most definitely) it is not the most interesting question to be asking of these things or the ideas they embody. But I have been thinking about performative writing and performative art-making as strategies of refuting the market-capitalist impulses ingrained in all of us; not writing/making to serve masters but to facilitate sensation and different forms of liveness, invitations someplace beyond the immediate. 

Attuned to the performativity of the exhibition environment, Vivian spotlights some works in the gallery. The scene is set for something to happen; gesture and sensation — ideally of shared, reciprocal kinds — are privileged over objecthood, thingness, the containable. All of these works are tools to do something with, objects to be activated, future things. Paintings become garments and lookers become sculptures; we encounter one work leading to another with an unusual alertness to bodily intuition. Vivian speaks of the pieces and their audience forming community, inviting consideration of their curative and remedial properties. In this sense, for as central as the notion of liveness/teimladwyedd is to Vivian’s practice, this close community of sculptures and garments and draping magnificences are something like corpses until activated by a human body or bodies. What happens when they come alive?

December 2023