Hedd Dros Wynedd (‘Peace Over Gwynedd’), slate and Carrara marble, North Wales Police Headquarters, Colwyn Bay, 1972 (destroyed 2002). Photographs: Robert Greetham.
Jonah’s third wall sculpture was commissioned for the foyer of the North Wales Police headquarters in Colwyn Bay. The piece, which measured some 7 ft high by 15 ft wide, was explicit in its symbolism. Jonah had been assessing at Belfast College of Art, thereby witnessing the effect of the troubles in Northern Ireland. Whenever he flew from Liverpool to the province, he would be struck by the contrast between the peacefulness of the cloud-dappled Welsh hills to his left and the tension he found in Belfast.
In reference both to this and the role of the police in keeping the peace, he named the piece Hedd Dros Wynedd (Peace Over Gwynedd) and based his imagery on a stylised map of North Wales. The land was formed of blue slate slabs, the patches of sea by rough green Bethesda slate. The hills and mountains were represented by sawn slivers of blue slate set into a chevron pointing upwards to echo the lie of the underlying ‘map’; superimposed on this was a counterpointing shallow wing of white marble shapes mimicking a bank of clouds. Towns, castles, stone circles and holy places were notionally also betokened by marble forms.
The easily accessible imagery made the work popular. But in 2002, the North Wales Police Authority decided to refurbish the area and their contractors threw the entire wall sculpture into a skip.
Available as a set of photographic prints from the Jonah Jones Store (link).