20 Years of Cardiff Culture – Happy Birthday TactileBOSCH

by Jen Abell

TactileBOSCH, experimental Cardiff arts collective, this year celebrates its 20th birthday.

Penblwydd hapus TactileBOSCH (tB)! You are jolly good fellows indeed. Dear reader, I’d like to give you a neat and accessible history of these Cardiff art stalwarts, but there isn’t one story. There are thousands of colliding, colluding and interlocking journeys that have and continue to shape tB’s course. And Oh Mildred! It’s anything but neat. By way of introduction, here I give you a shortened, edited (read- dry cleaned) version of how I came to know the BOSCH and the BOSCHettes.

When I first laid eyes on Kim Fielding, half the founding Fathers of TactileBOSCH, he was the coiffured, snorting, over sharing guest speaker of the then Swansea Metropolitan, now Swansea College of Art, 2009 degree show. Yes, I vaguely remember him talking about the work, the tutors, the Uni. But what I remember most is his mischievous, coercive cackle and incessant foot stomping, relaying the hilarity of his travelling companion traversing the event with a broken leg. A full re-enactment was given to said person’s attempt and failure to exit the car with dignity. Suited and booted graduate guardians were bewildered, I was intrigued.

He didn’t plan, he didn’t think about the audience, and he didn’t have any notes. He didn’t need to. Every artist pumped out of South Wales art schools for a decade crossed the TactileBOSCH threshold. He, Simon Mitchell (founding Father) and gallery volunteers let artists try, let them fail and let them try again. As well as being a photographer and performance artist himself, Kim was an expert, with great instincts. He didn’t need a finished product, a concluded project, a ‘creative practitioner’ or an essay on ‘reach and audience profile’ as a password to public participation in the culture of Cardiff. 2001 to 2012. Serendipitously, within a week of seeing Kim at the degree show, my brother, artist John Abell, text me with instructions to come (NOW) to see a show by David Sopwith in tB. I ran for my coat. The work was wonderful. Waves of sculpted wood rolling overhead from rickety pigeon coop windows which must have had purpose when the site was a laundry.

Kim visibly brightened when I told him which work was my partner’s, artist Geraint Ross Evans, in Swansea’s degree show. ‘Oh! The car crash kid?! Get him down here, we need to talk’. Talk they did, and TactileBOSCH’s next exhibition, Auxesis, saw Geraint’s degree work; large scale drawings of car crashes and an actual crashed car determinedly negotiated from a reclamation yard, installed in prime position at the entrance of the gallery.

Sadly, a fully subscribed 12-24 month exhibition schedule featuring proven and established artists is standard across most galleries in Cardiff and indeed beyond, now. The flexibility of Kim, TactileBOSCH’s space and the BOSCHettes; a rotating team of dedicated volunteers, meant the energy of contemporary work by new artists could be exhibited immediately. Importantly, artists could experience instant audience feedback and gain momentum.

Auxesis was an audience success and hugely important for my partner, fresh from his degree. Two mornings after the show’s opening, we got a call from Kim. ‘Uhhh, Gezza did you move the car?’. We hadn’t. The sculpture had been stolen in the night. For scrap. A perfect microcosm of contemporary art commentaries and found wildly funny by all involved. More wonderful collaborations followed; Citizen, Moist, Unchartered Perspectives (Blowback), Tenure. I met creatives, misfits, eccentrics, and geniuses. People making work for work’s sake. Geraint rented a studio and our participation in this welcoming and energetic community deepened. Despite visiting the studio most days, I still don’t think I uncovered all the rooms in the labyrinth. And always Kim urged me, ‘Jen Abell, you’re a writer, you should WRITE’.

2012 came, and with it, the news that our incredible piece of Cardiff Victorian history and indeed, contemporary lives was to be torn down for Kim declared ‘Wimpy Homes’. With this, our safe space to experiment, for artists to cut their teeth and inhabit affordable Cardiff studios was lost. Llandaff North will never house such a weird and wonderful Mecca again.

TactileBOSCH’s first and most permanent home inhabited a damp, multi level maze of a former Victorian laundry on Andrews Road, the Llandaff North exit of Hailey Park, from

We have a serious problem in Cardiff. Box room studios start at £400+ a month. Fine if you’re a maker, not if you’re an artist. Cost of living is increasing. Galleries don’t show unestablished artists and grants are biased towards creative practitioners, audience participation and community engagement. Impossible for artists that need to work alone or that find 12 page grant applications anxiety inducing. Difficult also for artists working such long hours for their day

jobs that composing applications is unfeasible. If we continue to provide hostile ground, we will suffocate our creative and diverse voices. It’s vital that experimental arts collectives continue to flourish, and receive our support, even if they don’t get it right every time. That’s the joy of experimentation and development, after all.

TactileBOSCH lived many lives with Kim after losing the building, including; Milgi warehouse takeovers, studio spaces at the Wells Hotel, and touring to Bath Contemporary. In 2014, just as he was truly coming to terms with the loss of the laundry building, Kim had a fatal heart attack. The Cardiff, New York, San Francisco, and Berlin art scenes that Kim had participated in for 30 years held their breath, collective hearts bursting with the loss of our self proclaimed ‘Instictator’. Thanks to sustained and determined efforts by Helene Roberts, performance artist Beth Greenhalgh and the BOSCHettes since 2014, the torch remains lit, Cardiff remains on the global art map and tactileBOSCH’s silken web of collaborators remains unbroken. Recent TactileBOSCH exhibitions of note include ‘Garden of Earthly Delights’ and ‘Paradise Lost’ in the old Custom and Immigration Building in Cardiff Bay, ‘Under The Counter Culture’ on Cathedral Road, ‘Black and Blue’ in Rosalux Gallery, Berlin and the first ‘National Museum Late: Space’ in 2019.

I’m relieved to report that thanks to Axis web’s Vacant Spaces programme, which matchmakes artists with empty buildings, tactileBOSCH is currently housed in our very own Capitol Centre. From 10/09/21, you can visit ‘Materials From the Garden’ by Penny Hallas and Allen Fisher. This work is inspired by time spent in Pontcanna allotments over lockdown featuring projections, drawings and installation. A glimpse of paradise in the midst of climate disaster. 25/09/21 sees a special exhibition event featuring a saxophonist and poetry- all are welcome.

People of Cardiff, make the most of these creative happenings whilst you can. At any point, an organisation could sign a rental contract with Capitol. When the inevitable happens, TactileBOSCH and the myriad of people they support will be on the hunt for another space once again. Follow @tactileBosch and tactilebosch.co.uk for news, respond to call outs and let them know if you’ve got space for artists, however weird and wonderful.

To the dreamers, explorers and experimenters I’ve met on my 11 year segment of the 20 year TactileBOSCH journey; you truly make my city shine brighter. I, like so many BOSCHettes, wish I could (and often do) tell Kim our news. I would love to celebrate the prophecy he gave me back in 2009. You were right Kim, here I am, writing. Where would we be without your encouragement ringing in our ears? Happy 20th birthday to a Cardiff cultural institution and long live the BOSCH! X The Management X

@ffotojenic