The Cardiff Tapes (2019)

A bold investigation into the changing meaning of public sculpture across 50 years

In 1972, British artist Garth Evans (born 1934) temporarily installed a public sculpture in Cardiff, Wales, as part of the UK-wide City Sculpture Project. The next morning, he made a recording of responses to the sculpture from passersby. In 2015, Evans set out on a mission to return the sculpture to the same location in order to make a second recording—how would people respond to it nearly 45 years later? What he discovered in 2019 was just how much had changed, from cultural understandings about public art to the site, the sculpture and himself. The Cardiff Tapes (2019) presents the transcript of Evans’ second recording along with the artist’s reflections on the experiment and art historian Ann Compton’s framing of it. A follow-up to Soberscove’s The Cardiff Tapes (1972), this book explores the stakes involved in artistic redisplays and the changing nature of public art.