tactileBOSCH invites you to slip a fist inside the velvet glove of their archive.
For 25 years, we've made ephemeral, time-based practice in abandoned spaces, now long gone, capturing moments of a Cardiff that no longer exists. The work was never built to last. Performances for one night. Rooms transformed and then abandoned. Half-remembered conversations and ideas never realised.
What remains are fragments. Photographs. Audio recordings. Video files. Projection slides. Notebooks. Posters. Hard drives and Polaroids.
For our birthday year, we are opening Pandora's box. Join us at Ffotogallery, where the archive will be live across formats. Watch. Listen. Flick through. Sit with a projection. Put on headphones. The material spans the life of the collective and the hidden history of Cardiff itself — the disused factories, the abandoned nightclubs, the marginal buildings we reanimated.
Grassroots practice is fragile. It leaves few traces. It operates outside the institutions that preserve history. Right now, art schools are contracting. Funding demands measurable outcomes. Independent spaces are disappearing.
The ghosts of past practice are not simply memories. They are raw material. To summon them, to handle the fragments, to listen to the lost recordings, to sit with what was almost forgotten is to ask not only what happened, but what might still happen. What futures can we build by reanimating what came before?
Add your own memories. Leave a note. Record a story, a memory, an idea, a dream for the future. Help us imagine what artist-led grassroots practice in this city could look like over the next twenty-five years.
This is not a retrospective. This is a reactivation. A site of speculation, improvisation and encounter.
Join us at Ffotogallery and experience the archive firsthand. Handle the materials. Listen back. flick through, sit with what remains and add to the stories.
Drop-in session: Saturday 16 May 2026, 12–5pm (no need to book)
Weekday access (by appointment): Wednesday 13 – Friday 15 May, during gallery opening hours (email to book)
To book a time in the week, email: beth@tactilebosch.co.uk
