Art exhibition shows bare gallery

So what's going on here at Chapter in Cardiff? Well, nothing really...

An artist has been given a grant to put on an exhibition consisting of nothing but an empty gallery.

Simon Pope, 40, said the aim was to encourage people to walk around the empty rooms and discuss memories of other galleries.

He said the work in Cardiff's Chapter Arts Centre divided opinion, but some visitors had "got a lot out of it".

It has been funded by the Arts Council of Wales and the Sciart Wellcome Trust, a charity promoting art and science.

Pope, who represented Wales at the Venice Biennale art festival in 2003, said: "You can simplify the context and ignore my intentions, but there are also people who know the work and see it in an informed way.

"Obviously, there's a split reaction. There are those who love it and those who wonder why I've done it.

"There are three distinct audiences: the people I've worked with in Chapter over the last few weeks, those who come to the event who know the wider context and don't trivialise the work, and people who have no idea what's in here.

A seemingly impossible feat: summoning up remote spaces - through memory, body, speech and movement - reduplicating these spaces, so that they exist at two locations simultaneously Chapter Arts Centre on Simon Pope's work

The exhibition, Gallery Space Recall, benefited from a portion of £50,000 funding given to Chapter by the Arts Council of Wales (ACW).

"If you read the comments in the visitors' book, even people I wouldn't expect to understand the full context have got a lot out of it."

The ACW said the money was for a 12-month programme of arts activity, of which Simon Pope's solo exhibition formed a "small part".

"Chapter has proved to be a key venue in terms of delivering new, sometimes controversial, but always thought-provoking work to an exceptionally high standard," said the ACW.

"The ACW welcomes the gallery's role in stimulating and promoting critical debate around the arts in Wales."

A Chapter spokeswoman said: "We set agendas, we don't follow them".

She said participants in the exhibition could perform "a seemingly impossible feat: summoning up remote spaces - through memory, body, speech and movement - reduplicating these spaces, so that they exist at two locations simultaneously."