An empty shopfront in Brecon has been brought to life with a digitally-created film by an award-winning artist

The vacant shop on High Street has been transformed thanks to a local initiative aiming to revitalize and animate Brecon’s streets with contemporary art projects.

Featuring Welsh artist Nye Thompson’s film Insulae (meaning Island), commissioned for the Barbican Centre of Performing Arts London, the projection brings light and colour to Brecon in even the darkest days of winter.

It also marks the first public art project by Digital Art Collective Brecon, a new group formed by three Brecon locals. The collaboration is betwen Ruth Gibbs of The Muse Brecon, Ruth Lloyd, a local art consultant, and Carla Rapoport, founder of the Lumen Prize for Art and Technology.

Flying at drone height, Insulae, created on Google Earth, tours the waters just off the British coastline in a digitally-reconstructed, unending journey. With a deep figurative meaning, the film shows the ocean as a metaphorical buffer between the UK and the rest of the world, as the viewer endlessly circles the entire British mainland, as if patrolling these watery borders.

Ruth Lloyd said: “Brecon has a vibrant arts community and working together with the local business community and the financial support of The Usk Valley Trust, we’ve brought this innovative piece of digital work by a leading visual artist to the people of Brecon to experience in the street scape.

“Presenting art using a disused shop is both Covid-safe and accessible to a very wide audience who might not be inspired to go to an art gallery. It also animates our public space, using a shop would otherwise have been empty through the winter months.”

Ruth Gibbs added: “It’s exciting to be involved in this project in the middle of winter in Brecon town, creating something unexpected. It catches people passing by surprise and gives them the opportunity to stop, look and respond without asking anything from them.

“The work itself has a local and global element, which suits the setting of Nye’s work, an international artist, being displayed in a mid-wales rural town’s shop window.”

Insulae will be shown until February 20 at 30, High Street, Brecon.