DWR
August 06

Stitt was awarded the prestigious Ivor Davies Award at the Welsh NationalEisteddfod for his video installation DWR. The award named after Ivor Daviesan artist who contributed performances to the legendary "Symposium for Destruction in Art" in London in the 1960s, is made in recognition of art that advances political and social issues.

DWR, which premiered at Chapter Art Gallery in Cardiff in 2005, is concernedwith the drowning of a Welsh village and the eradication of the Welsh language at Capel Celyn in the nineteen sixties. The valley was drownedto provide water for the city of Liverpool without the consent of the Welsh nation.

The installation acts as a reference not only to the notion of adisenfranchised and dispossessed community but to also convey notions of asubmerged , local and national identity. These general concerns arelinked to the wider implications of post colonial trauma, cultural imperialism,psychological and real genocide.

These references are particular to thehistory of what has taken place at Capel Celyn and to the experience of the Welsh nation as a whole.