Tim Davies, Bridge, 2011

The Wales pavilion at this year’s Venice Biennale shows the work of Swansea artist Tim Davies. It includes some video pieces plus this installation of small framed artworks – postcards of bridges that have been sanded back to the structure.

Davies had read about the destruction of the famous arched bridge in Mostar, Bosnia, during the Balkans war. This act seemed to summarise the whole conflict, the destroying of connections, the prevention of opposing sides bridging their differences.

After collecting numerous postcards of bridges, he sanded them back to reveal only the bridge itself, the pure structural form; they make elegant design motifs. The missing landscapes make you think about what bridges do, how they join places together, make communication and commerce possible.