Bedwyr Williams | Basta

Bedwyr Williams
Basta
Wales, UK: Wales Arts International, 2005
[60] pp., 23.4 x 15.8 cm., softcover
Edition of 2000


I just got off a Zoom meeting with a friend who is helping to start a new residency program in Toronto, and asked Roula and I to share our related experiences with her. My sole preparation for the meeting was locating this book on the shelf. 

The opening page text is the most succinct and honest take on the residency experience: 

"Artists in residence smell, they fill their spaces with special teas, comfy mules, Olbus Oil and other knick knacks. 

They get ill, they misunderstand the heating system in their lodgings.1 

They haven't really got enough clothes with them. They don't have a car and are usually damp. 

Also you must go out for a drink with them sometime. 

THEY NEVER REALLY DO WHAT THEY SAID THEY WOULD."

During a residency at the Banff Centre, I became entirely spoiled because the staff cleaned the rooms bi-weekly, and the resident's food was prepared three times daily (with an additional self-serve snack bar space that was open 24/7). The only thing you had to do yourself was your laundry. So - even though there was a convenient laundry room within the residence building - I found myself really resenting having to do this one, single, simple chore. I drove to Calgary and bought more shirts. 

I was able to do so because of a generous uncle in the city who had loaned me his second car for the six-week duration. But it was clear that Williams' observation that most residents were without a getaway vehicle is both true and impactful.2

Unsurprisingly, Basta features a chapter on 'Laundry', as well as 'Personal Space', 'Jogging' and 'Venice the Menace'. The work was produced when Williams was invited to represent Wales at the Venice Biennale, in 2005. His work became about the experience of living in the city for three months - the disorientation, the general culture shock, the misunderstandings, the social anxieties, the overly helpful suggestions from friends at home insisting on various places that he simply must visit ("It would have been more useful if they had told me where not to go"), pets, etc. etc. 

The slim bookwork is a diary of sorts and its title, Basta, is from the Italian word for "Enough". 

We met Bedwyr, after traveling off the beaten track of the other venues to see his exhibition, which was a highlight of that year's Biennale. He was animated and amusing, much like his work, which - almost twenty years later - still examines the idiosyncrasies of the art world, pricking at pomposity. 

The exhibition Bedwyr Williams: Older Artist at Phillida Reid in London closes this Saturday, May 27th. The show features lightbox drawings with captions such as: "Quiet Art People Communicating via the Medium of Trouser" and "Artists Who Everyone Says Are Lovely Don’t Like You." Frieze reviewed the show yesterday, which can be read here. 

Despite being produced in an edition of two-thousand copies, and originally selling for three pounds, Basta is now scarce and sells on Amazon, here, for $140.00. 

1. I only half-paid attention to the instructions involving the cottage heater during orientation on my first day in residence at the Glenfiddich Distillery in Northern Scotland, thinking to myself "but it's June". I turned the heat on every single evening in the three months that I was there. 

2. The Glenfiddich Artist-in-Residence program recognizes this dilemma and a bicycle is made available for each of the summer residents. It's in the contract.