Relics360 Photosphere exhibition - Wales Millennium Centre

While attempting to entertain my children on a cloudy summer holiday morning, I took my children to Cardiff Bay. When needing a bathroom break, I had to take my children into Wales Millennium Centre and walked through the door into a photography exhibition. This was my first ever exhibition and I was happy that I'd stumbled upon it.

The exhibition was by Cardiff based visual artist Matt Wright as part of the Relics project. Panoramic landscape photographs of welsh historical sites were printed onto air filled spheres and laid out in a line directly in the entrance hall of the Millennium Centre.

Wales Millennium Centre - AlCallow 2015.

Relics Photospheres at Wales Millennium Centre

Relics Photospheres at Wales Millennium Centre

Relics Photospheres at Wales Millennium Centre

I really love the project and think the spheres are an exceptional way to showcase the panoramic views at these sites. I have been to a few of the sites shown in the images and they are beautiful historical locations and the photographs and the spheres really do highlight them beautifully. 

Relics Photosphere of Din Lligwy Hut Group

Relics photosphere of Raglan Castle

Relics photosphere of Porthgain Harbour

Relics photosphere of Blaenavon Ironworks

Relics photosphere of Valley Crucis Abbey photosphere

The beauty about the spheres themselves is that they almost make the photographs 3D. You can walk around them as opposed to seeing them flat against a surface. The only downsideI encountered though was that the spheres are obviously filled with air from the box at the base but one of the spheres wasn't sitting upright, it had a tilt to it and so the images was lob-sided. Each sphere had an informative circle on the floor, telling the viewer what the site was in both English and Welsh. It also gave the project website and a QR scan code for more information on the project.  

Apart from the tilt on the sphere, I think the exhibition was very effective. 

When I looked online at the website for more information on the project, the exhibition at the Millennium Centre followed site-specific exhibitions at each of the photographed sites where the sphere photographed as part of the site itself , linking the actual location with the portion of the sphere visible to the camera. This was obviously the true purpose of the project and it looks remarkable seeing the sphere interacting with the site itself. It's not something I have seen before and definitely makes a statement. 

As the final image is seen flat, I'm guessing it would make more of an impact seeing it in person but I cant help but wonder whether it would "fit in" to the site looking at it from all angles, although i'm sure it would with it being a spherical panoramic. Unfortunately, as I said, the site-specific exhibitions all took place at the beginning of the year and so I am unable to go see for myself. But for anyone interested in seeing the photosphere exhibition can do so at the National Waterfront Museum, Swansea.

More information on the Relics project can be found on their website at http://www.relics360.com/about/