Photographs taken by Brian Swaddling over the course of eight years have been turned into a stop motion journey along the Rheidol river.

Brian is a multi-disciplinary landscape artist who works at Aberystwyth Arts Centre. He has lived in Aberystwyth for 25 years, first attending university there in 2000 to study Art and Performance Studies.

Frequenters of Penglais woods may have spotted his land art pieces there, or even met him covered in mud making them.

Brian works with music, photography, found natural materials and field recordings, exploring human connections and relations with the land.

The Afon project has taken him years to complete, and Brian hopes the film will entertain as well as educate.

Explaining more, Brian said: “I have been taking thousands and thousands of photos of Afon Rheidol, cycling, walking, or driving up and down the valley, talking to people, reading, writing, and recording, getting lost in bogs and on misty mountains, collecting poems, following maps and directions, swimming, paddling, losing hats, finding hats, losing them again, playing guitar, dangling microphones off bridges, listening to the river, looking at the river, talking to the river, and clouds, and fish, and ducks, trees, bugs, grasses, flowers, rocks, mud, getting very cold, hot, wet, tired, excited, ill, better, and sitting in front of computers, clicking to make this film.

“Please come and see it.”

Brian’s photography is overlaid with a guitar impression of the character of the river at each location, as well as field recordings of the river and voices of people responding to it.

“Multiple perspectives have been gathered,” he explained. “Shepherds, ecologists, poets, storytellers, geographers, historians, residents and more have been edited in the tradition of Glen Gould’s contrapuntal radio, each voice a leaf floating downstream.

“Breaks in the film are filled with poems written about the river and stories from the past, painting a many layered response to the river’s story.”

The film also contains original music by Brian, Delyth Field, and more.

‘Afon’ presents an adventure through time and tradition from deep history, to the present day and, beyond. Watch it at Ceredigion Museum on 9 May.

Brian, who hosts the evening, will also do a Q&A after the screening.

For tickets and more information, call 01970 612125 or https://shorturl.at/KB7lT.

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