Menai Holiday Cottages, a self-catering holiday cottage company based in North Wales, has sponsored the creation of a film and outdoor painting installation. Menai Holidays hopes that the installation will encourage visitors to the region to make a deeper connection with the region's dramatic landscapes and the incredible forces - natural and man-made - that have shaped them. A preview of the film which accompanies the High and Low installation was released online this week. A full length version of the film will be shown at arts festivals and galleries across the UK from the autumn of 2016. High and Low, or 'uchel ac isel', is a spectacular outdoor painting installation which has been created by British landscape artist Anthony Garratt.
The installation tells a unique and compelling story about the history, geography and industrial heritage of North Wales, encouraging visitors to make a deeper connection with the region's dramatic landscape and the forces that have shaped it. High and Low features two giant paintings, created in two very different dramatic and inspiring sites: one floating high on the flanks of Snowdon on Llyn Llydaw, and one which is suspended deep beneath the mountains in an abandoned slate cavern at Llechwedd Slate Mine.
Each of the two locations offers a unique and arresting opportunity for highly visual storytelling and contemplation: from the soaring light and reflected imagery of the mountain lake to the dark atmospheric shadows and acoustics of the abandoned slate cavern. Because the paintings were created in situ and are seen in context, they offer a very different way for the viewer to engage with both the art and the landscape which inspired it.
The paintings were created using water-based paint as well as sympathetic and naturally occurring local materials like slate dust and copper. Snowdonia has a long tradition as being a region that has attracted landscape painters - from Richard Wilson to Turner - as well as admirers of the landscape art form. Visitors who would like to see 'High' should park at Pen-y-Pass car park and follow the Miner's Track path which ascends Snowdon. The easy, track-based walk to Llyn Llydaw takes around 40 minutes.
