Anthony Shapland, Wakelin Award Selection 2021, Cinzia Mutigli

The Wakelin Award is administered by the Friends of the Glynn Vivian and results in a work of fine art or craft being purchased for the Gallery collection. This work is by a Welsh artist of merit whose work is not yet well represented in public collections. In 2021, the work was selected by artist, writer and curator Anthony Shapland, who is also a previous recipient of the award.

There’s a thing that happens when artists also work-work in the visual arts. A bit like standing too close to a radio mast where the signal reaches only those further away with clarity; they get eclipsed by their support for others or typecast in light of the benefits they deliver to other practitioners or situations. Although they are at the centre of a number of activities they are often in danger of being overlooked as artists.

That is why I was really pleased to nominate Cinzia for the award. Her precision in writing and delivering works – be they performative, exhibition or publication – demonstrate a steady progression and a consistency over a number of years as one of the most considered and versatile artists working here. This award is a marker of her career and impact in Wales.

I have known Cinzia since the mid-90s, I returned to Wales at about that time and we were in overlapping artists circles. Cinzia was part of an artist group, Quincunx, with Angharad Pearce Jones, and we were all rattling around in the same scene as g39 grew from small beginnings. At the same time, Karen MacKinnon, a new face at Chapter had launched a series of shows under the banner Ffresh that looked at new work from artists in Wales. There was a sense that a whole generation of artists were becoming more visible, that structures were changing and growing in confidence.

Over the years we crossed paths in her work at Cywaith Cymru/Artworks Wales, supporting commissions and careers of many artists. Then Cinzia was involved in establishing Elbow Room, a public arts agency before she joined g39 where she now works with me in programming and artists development. We’re both committed to supporting other artists, we spend a lot of time talking about the structures that define ‘success’ for artists in Wales, the hierarchies and career expectations, that artists careers should allow for family, time away or other focuses, that a practice is part of life, not separate. We both forget sometimes, to step back and remember that we are part of that ecology.

I was privileged to have worked on SURVEY II, with Jerwood Arts and SITE gallery, an exhibition that opened at g39 in the summer of 2021 and featured a new commission from

Cinzia. At the time, opportunities for larger scale ambitious solo projects had pushed her work and reputation, building on a well researched lexicon of references and research. She is on a trajectory strengthened by a longer practice.

The work we agreed to put forward for the purchase prize was Sweet Wall. Made for Jupiter Artland, Scotland in 2020, it is mesmerising, though that feels like too small a word. The repetitive imagery and understated, but direct, narrative, orbits the central motif of sugar.

In the film – while we fixate on the repetitive pleasures of candycrush lines dropping satisfyingly into position, or a sweet prize spun into cotton, or the crystal white sugar falling like snow into red fruit for jam – something else seeps through. It is accompanied by the parallel narrative of addiction, desire and gratification; the trauma of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, post-colonial identity and greed.

The rhythm is a lull, the sweet imagery sleepwalks the viewer toward an understanding of complicity, of repeated behaviour that persists. The pattern of the film, the dead end of the repeated loops that don’t progress and the wallpaper motif that mirrors, repeats and echoes in a persistent visual voice. Over and over, again and again.

There’s a phrase about nothing being so blind to us as our immediate past, with only time and distance allowing us to see clearly the things that bring us to the ever-moving present. The artworld trope of discovering hidden practices jarrs in the fact that they were always there, in plain sight. Neither hard to reach or obscure. Cinzia reminds us that some of these patterns or systems that we move through day after day have become as invisible to us as air, but that they exist and shape the world.

I think that Cinzia’s work is remarkable, as is her commitment to Wales and support and input into the artscene here and I’m proud to have been able to support this with the help of the Glynn Vivian, The Friends, and of course, Peter and Rosemary Wakelin.

Anthony Shapland