Tanuki's Beaujolais Bar 
Custom-painted bar serving fizzy Vimto, performance, custom-made costume and 5 cutout paintings on tri-wall corrugated card.
Swansea Performance Weekend, Glynn Vivian Gallery
Thursday 20th November 2025   

 
  
  
  
  
  
    
 

Building on Walter’s longstanding interest in hospitality as a relational device for engaging audiences in painting he presents a new bar for Swansea: Tanuki’s Beaujolais Bar resurrects Walter’s jestered persona, celebrating death and rebirth through a series of five archetypes: JESTER, PHOENIX, LAZARUS, CICADA, and TANUKI. Tanuki is a mythological, shapeshifting Japanese racoon dog, seen frequently in ceramic form around Kyoto holding money and drinking sake. Swansea’s fondness for Beaujolais Day is the setting for a playful and surreal spectacle toasting dormancy and revival, rebirth, renewal, change, and trickster transformation.

Photos: Dafydd Williams and Polly Thomas