Welsh artists at Venice Biennale

Richard Deacon's work is a response to the exhibition space

Four Welsh artists will be exhibiting sculptures, paintings and installations at one of the world's leading modern art shows over the next few months.

Richard Deacon, Merlin James and Heather and Ivan Morison were picked to showcase their work at the Venice Biennale in Italy, opening on Sunday.

The notion of transition is said to connect their work, some of which also incorporates sound and film.

The Welsh exhibition, called And So It Goes, can be viewed in an old brewery.

The exhibition is the third time Wales has been represented at the Biennale and the country is one of over 70 nations participating.

The artists were chosen in 2006 by a panel consisting of leading figures in the arts world in Wales.

They are sharing the exhibition space at the Ex-Birreria on the island of Giudecca, with artists from Lebanon.

The exhibition's title was inspired by Kurt Vonnegut's novel Slaughterhouse Five, where the phrase "so it goes" was used to mark a period of transition.

This piece has a sister sculpture in the Morison's woods in Gwynedd

Heather and Ivan Morison's large sculpture outside the brewery and a sound and slide animation installation inside, were both derived from and inspired by a wood they purchased in north Wales in 2005.

The couple, who live in Arthog, Gwynedd, cleared some of the mature conifers there and have started to replace them with trees gathered from around the world to create an arboretum of their travels.

The conifer timber has then been used to realise much of the couple's exhibition in Venice, including their large piece Pleasure Island which has a sister sculpture in their woods that can be visited for the duration of the Biennale.

The Morison's installation documents their search of America for nomadic groups of people who travelled in house trucks made of felled timber.

Richard Deacon, who was awarded the prestigious Turner Prize in 1987, responded directly to the architecture and features of the dusty room in which his work was set to be seen, to produce a number of sculptures made of wood, ceramics and steel.

Some of Mr James' canvasses are layered with hair or dirt

He said he was particularly intrigued by the nails that uniformly studded the surface of the walls and had 150 cast in bronze for the exhibition.

Mr Deacon, who is from Bangor, Gwynedd, also made his sculptures as if they were for the floor, not the wall, but mounted them on the walls of his exhibition space.

Cardiff born and educated Merlin James is displaying a selection of his finest canvasses in the Biennale, including landscapes, interiors, nude figures, dwellings and motorways.

Texture is a big feature of his work, and several are slashed, collaged or layered with hair or dirt.

Wales at the Biennale can be viewed at Ex-Birreria, Giudecca, Venice from 10 June until 21 November.