Y Bala seeks to encompass two practices, which use performance and sound to activate ambient and tacit histories of space. The exhibition combines themes of welsh folklore, narrative objects (primarily vessels), cinematic tropes of women in the folk-horror genre, body as primal investigative tool in landscape and the auditory presence of place. The project is a collaboration between artists Anna Jane Houghton and Abbie Bradshaw, Y Bala acts as a sister exhibition to Lido (2022), partnered in their exploration of the space between, activating presence, and the validity of place through its relation to that of another.

Y Bala interrogates folklore as its spring board, in particular the tale of Lake Bala also known as Llyn Tegid, known for its legend of having a sunken town beneath its surface. There are two recorded versions of how the flooding occurred. This concept of augmented truths is a key theme throughout Y Bala. Firstly, in that it allows chance artefacts found within a space to aid the realisation of a chosen belief. Secondly how the recounting, or in this case, recording of site, will always be subject to ones own experience within it, particularly the communication of women’s experience of landscape in folk-horror cinema, often considered representational and prone to emotional bias rather than a definitive portrayal.

Y Bala in its form is primarily the act of performance documented cinematically exploring lost space through bodily activation and curated narratives that are unearthed through the surface of our skin, generating a primal tacit knowledge.

Y Bala has found a natural link to the this years Liverpool Biennial 2023 title, Umoya: A Sacred Return of Lost Things- the lost town of Bala that lives under the surface of the water, lost spaces, lost objects and lost narratives.