Ignacio Acosta presents ‘Coquimbo & Swansea’ at the National Waterfront Museum, Wales.
Site-specific installation of photographs and texts from series ‘Coquimbo & Swansea’, part of ‘Copper Geographies’.
From the late 1820s, copper ore was extracted from the Region of Coquimbo, northern Chile and smelted in the Lower Swansea Valley, Wales. Copper was mined from remote sites and brought by mule to Las Compañías, one of Chile’s first industrial metallurgical centres and where smelting processes had been established.
The ore and partly-smelted copper was shipped to the Lower Swansea Valley to be refined. The valley was heavily contaminated for more than two centuries, until the 1960s and 1970s when conservation work was carried out to reclaim polluted land.
These geopolitical tensions remain hidden in the photographs. By bringing these landscapes together, the artist wishes to reclaim historical connections and invites the viewer to imagine what is no longer there.
Please download here a catalogue with written contributions by historians Dr Tehmina Goskar and minerologist Frank Vicencio Lopez published in conjunction with the exhibition – Welsh and English versions
An artist talk took place on Saturday, 1 July, 11.30am at the National Waterfront Museum.
Funded with the generous support of: National Waterfront Museum, Wales, Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC)
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