Incredibly proud that Iron Worker is now part of the collection at Art UK.

Art UK is a cultural education charity and the online home for every public art collection in the UK. Its mission is to open up the UK’s national art collection for enjoyment, learning and research using a digital infrastructure that is shared by some 3,500 UK institutions.

Just over a year ago I’d been part of the Juxtaposed exhibition at @cyfarthfacastle, and this piece won the prize for Best Print.

It has taken me on quite a journey since that evening—leading to workshops, an amazing network of fellow artists and friends, being presented to King and Queen, and the freedom to truly express myself through my practice.

Now the print has been acquired into the permanent collection at @cyfarthfacastle, it will hang on their walls. There is a deep irony to that; it will sit inside the very estate of the Crawshay family, who would have employed the figure depicted in the print.

Iron Worker depicts a solitary figure from Merthyr Tydfil’s industrial revolution, when the town stood as the iron capital of the world, producing 40% of Britain’s iron by the 1820s.

The central figure is drawn from a blend of historical images and imagination, representing the countless workers who endured horrific poverty and appalling living conditions in what was once described as “hell on earth,” while the Crawshey ironmasters profited from their labor in the luxury of Cyfarthfa Castle.

The print incorporates local landmarks surrounding the Cyfarthfa ironworks: the Cefn Coed viaduct, the skeletal remains of the world’s oldest surviving iron railway bridge, terraced houses, chapels, and the Pandy Clock that is rumored to have one face left blank “so that the riff-raff couldn’t see the time.”

This is an acknowledgment of the human cost and class contempt behind Merthyr’s industrial dominance.

Hwyl fawr,

Daniel John Thorne