Exhibition
11/04/25 - 18/05/25

What are we in now???
Angharad Williams

Muzzle Velocity refers to the speed at which a projectile or bullet exits the barrel of a firearm or artillery. Sixty-five rounds per second is currently the fastest rate for a traditional firearm. It’s also the title of the 9-minute, 40-second 4K video featured in this exhibition. In the video, I (Angharad), along with three friends, silently fly over Brooklyn in a helicopter, heading toward a landing pad in Manhattan’s Murray Hill. In 2023 I paid for us to take a helicopter for the first time. The Blade shuttle service is accessible to anyone with some disposable money. You buy the Blade, you buy time. The footage loops: we arrive, then immediately depart. It’s almost impossible to take in New York (America) all at once.

Scarecrows It started with setting fires, fingers still in growth. Perfecting the paper crumble so that air can pass through, catching kindling to generate sufficient heat to engulf the coal. Anthracite is a talisman in Wales. Later, the competition between us siblings is proposed when we learn to light a fire with a single match. Speed is an essential component here, too. These fireplaces from my childhood and imagination are here translated into white foam core, adhered with silicone; developed in various scales from 2017 until now. One of the things I find interesting about fireplaces is that they belong to everyone – especially to Storytellers. And I like that Storytellers understand implicitly that the full tale can never be told. 

Myself as Tinky Winky as Iggy Pop When Iggy appeared on the front cover of his record Lust for Life, he had just that. A lust for life. Just got clean. Sleep out of his eyes. The world was pretty different then. It wasn’t difficult for me to imagine the most wonderful picture: that of Tinky Winky behind the scenes, framed just like Iggy Pop, forever. I think this might also be called getting better at life – being a better pacifist. 

The Sardine Syndrome. Kids – they’re gonna get their own back. Magic. The internet is not the only thing that connects people.

What are we in now??? Part one (suffixed with ?) and part two (suffixed with ??) were group exhibitions curated and organised in recent years by The Wig, an ongoing collaboration between myself, Richard Sides, and Gianmaria Andreetta. We used the title to consider our collective moment in art historical terms, and more urgently as a way of understanding how performance seeps into both life and art in changing times. We were interested in how contingency becomes part of the work; how it shapes the materials we use and the energy we draw on. 

Angharad Williams, 2025

 

Angharad Williams (b. Ynys Cybi, Wales) is an artist, writer, and performer who is concerned with the role of poetry in our increasingly militarised society.

Recent solo exhibitions and performances took place at Haus am Waldsee, Berlin (2025); SIMIAN, Copenhagen (2025); Schiefe Zähne, Berlin (2024); Fanta, Milan (2023); Kunstverein Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf (2022); Mostyn, Llandudno (2022) and Kevin Space, Vienna (2021). Angharad’s first book Eraser was published by After8 Books, Paris in 2023. Summer 2025 Williams will release a limited 12” vinyl with Concentric Group, London & the Bauhaus Foundation, Dessau. Angharad is a teacher at the Masters Fine Art at Zürcher Hochschule der Künste, Zürich.