James Milne

South Wales 2014 is not the same as South Wales 1974, 1984 etc. Different times. Different landscapes. Different versions of the country.

Heavy industry has always required large scale installations characterized by a purely functional architecture devoid of aesthetic concerns. Everything is connected and operated towards a specific purpose. The mine is a vast machine for extracting raw materials from the Earth. The steelworks is a vast machine for processing iron ore.

In South Wales there were mines and steelworks and factories all over the country, employing thousands of people. It is a history documented in photographs, drawings, paintings and written accounts. It is a history that is often talked about. These are fragments, evidence that a different version of the country that existed before the one we occupy today (a past that was wiped away to make way for the present).

Some physical traces survive, fragments of vast industrial machines left in forgotten corners when the industries migrated to other countries. Industrial complexes were disassembled and cleared, leaving behind occasional debris like jigsaw pieces that offer hints of a larger, lost image.

Stripped of all relevant contexts, the work of the imaginatio...

BA (Hons) Fine Art (Dundee University) 2005

MFA (Dundee University) 2007

MFA Documentary Photography (University of South Wales, Newport) 2014

2014
'Removed' Blackwood Miners Institute, Blackwood, Caerphilly (Wales)

2012
'Starting_Again' Ffloc Gallery, University of Wales, Newport (Wales)
'Open Exhibition' Rhondda Heritage Park, Trehafod (Wales)
'Ghosts in Armour' The Santa Fe Complex (United States)

2011
'Hyphen' Ffotogallery, Penarth, Cardiff (Wales)
'Open Exhibition' Rhondda Heritage Park, Trehafod (Wales)
'Ghosts in Armour' European Parliament, Brussels (Belgium)

2010
'Ghosts in Armour' Europe; the Riverfront Theatre & Arts Centre, Newport (Wales)
'See the Light' Ffloc Gallery, University of Wales, Newport (Wales)
'Ghosts in Bilbao' Bilbao Arte Residency Exhibition, Bilbao (Spain)
'GiA in the Trade Union Gallery' FTSI Trade Union, Barakaldo (Spain)
'Ghosts in Armour' Sestao Metro Station, Bilbao (Spain)

2009
'Ghosts in Armour' Casca Viejo Metro Station, Bilbao (Spain)
GiA Elements: 3; the National Waterfront Gallery, Swansea (Wales)
GiA Elements: 2; the National Waterfront Gallery, Swansea (Wales)
GiA Elements: 1; the National Waterfront Gallery, Swansea (Wales)

2008
'How to run a Cotton Mill' New Lanark World Heritage Site, Lanark (Scotland)

2007
'Symbiotic Intuition' MFA Degree Show, Dundee (Scotland)
'RSA Student Exhibition' E...