A collaboration between Swansea University and Swansea Print Workshop to celebrate the South Wales Miners’ Library 50th anniversary
It is the power of visual arts to evoke a memory, an emotion, a recognition: the feel of a piece of coal, the rousing call of the brass band, the face of a relative, now gone. And to ask us to reflect upon others’ lives – their losses and struggles – as we too, are drawn into the depths, to breathe the dusty air with the dark pressing around us.
These prints invite us to share knowledge and to educate ourselves about life in the past and to remember and recognise the imprint of mining history on our lives today.
MinersImprint was a members-only, printmaking project which took place in 2023/2024. SPW worked in collaboration with Swansea University to create artwork in celebration of the 50-year anniversary of the Miners’ Library and its relocation to new premises in 2024.
Sian Williams, Head of Special Collections and Mark Heycock, Art Collection and Creative Engagement Coordinator from Swansea University worked closely with the project team at SPW. The rich resource of the South Wales Miners’ Library (SWML) was made available to participating member-printmakers who explored the extensive collection of banners and books, testimonies, posters and plans. Other group activities took place including a trip to the Big Pit National Coal Museum and a sharing of research, ideas and work in progress through a private project blog.
Out of 32 prints created by the participating artists, 21 prints were selected by Sian Williams and Mark Heycock to form a special collection of limited edition prints.
Siân Williams (Head of Cultural Collections Engagement and Curation, Library and Collections) and Mark Heycock (Art Collection and Creative Engagement Coordinator) were delighted by the range of work created through the project – in all 32 prints – and they had the very difficult task of selecting the 21 prints for the collection.
The prints were first exhibited during April and May 2024 at the Taliesin Arts Centre. That year also marked the forty-year anniversary of the significant Miners’ Strike of 1984, and it was fitting and a privilege to show alongside the new work, a suite of prints by Paul Peter Piech from Coal, A Sonnet Sequence drawn from the Cultural Collections of Swansea University.
These prints are illustrations from Coal, A Sonnet Sequence by John Gurney published in 1994, to mark the closure of the Tower Colliery, the last deep coal mine in South Wales.
Exploring the rich resource of the South Wales Miners’ Library, SPW printmakers made discoveries and connections with the people and land that have been touched and shaped by the coal mining industry in this area of Wales.
As a collection of work, MinersImprint invites us to share knowledge and to educate ourselves about life in the past and to remember and recognise the imprint of mining history on our lives today.
This act of sharing, of education, is central to what we do at Swansea Print Workshop, and collaborative projects such as this, allows us to offer opportunities and a broader experience to our community of printmakers than simply creating a piece of artwork. MinersImprint was no exception. The project not only gave artists from across our membership a unique opportunity to have work included in the archives of Swansea University and SPW, and the collections of all UK and Ireland National Libraries, it also involved a way of working that was, in many different ways, new to them.
Several participants had never been part of a collaborative project, working to a brief: with a specific size of image, in black and white, and using a technique which would allow an edition of prints. For those less experienced artists, it was an opportunity to learn from other printmakers, to work with quality materials and to create work to a professional level. And we were delighted that through MinersImprint one of our emerging artists, a recipient of the inaugural Rosy Ind Award in 2023 was further supported in their creative development. For the more experienced and professional artists, the ‘limitations’ of the brief gave the stimulus to experiment with different techniques and approaches to the way they usually work, for example, combining techniques.
SPW also offered a new approach to collaboration in this project: a private blog where all participants could contribute their research, thoughts and work in progress and group activities including a trip to the Big Pit National Coal Museum and a project studio day where participants worked alongside each other, offering advice and sharing experience and skills.
Equally importantly, working collaboratively with a partner such as Swansea University allows SPW to share what we do with a wider audience, to show the energy and relevance of printmaking as an artform today.
The 21 prints are now on display in the new home of the South Wales’ Miners Library in Y Storfa, Oxford Street, Swansea.
The collection of selected prints have also been exhibited at Queen Street Gallery, Neath and The Welfare Ystradgynlais. You can read more about these exhibitions in our Archive.
A boxed set of the limited edition prints are held in the archives of the University and SPW, and in the collections of all six UK and Ireland National Libraries.
All 32 prints created by project participants on our dedicated online exhibition site: MinersImprint@Swansea Printmakers.
MINERSIMPRINT publication is available to purchase from our Online Shop. | The bilingual (Welsh/English) publication includes a two-page spread for each of the twenty-one prints and artists’ statements from MINERSIMPRINT special collection.
Individual prints from MINERSIMPRINT by SPW printmakers can be purchased from Prints for Sale in our Online Shop.
All Paul Peter Piech images used by kind permission of Olwen Stocker.
You can see a selection of earlier projects in our archive section including two projects Dylan Thomas Dialogues and Dylan Thomas, especially when the October wind where box sets of prints were created and which are now held in the collections of all the National UK Libraries.