Angharad Pearce Jones
On which side of the fence are you?
This is a huge installation about divisions in society, from bilingualism in Wales, Scottish and Welsh Independence, Brexit, Covid, wars... and the need, at some point to come together around the table and face our differences.
Elena Grace
Meet and separate
I moved into my late Nain's house with the responsibility of clearing her things. During my bereavement at this time, I became interested in the objects that held personal importance to my Nain. Sorting through her possessions, looking at the way she cared for them. Sitting within this space and studying it through painting.
Sian doing her homework
In a family photo album I found a photo of my Mam which had a label in the corner saying “Siân doing her homework.” I loved the way the photo was composed – distorted and naturally lit with her sat in the corner immersed in the book she was reading. In documenting this familiar quiet area of life, I removed Mam from the image, which left traces of her activity in these objects - papers laid out across the table, and the mug she was drinking from.
Daniel Crawshaw
“Walking south from Merthyr on a high, derelict road, I recorded the shifting, valley landscape that unfolded opposite. A forest straddled the skyline, electricity wires cut across fields, the A470 played hide and seek in the hinterlands and white houses sprang from winter woods. I wanted to capture these elements, as they might appear on ordinary days, yet, in the vertical format, I anticipated elevation and drama. I arrived at a diptych of almost identical paintings which, I hope, encapsulate the fleeting, photographic moment yet also resonate with the bonds between community and land.”
Nigel Hurlstone
A veiling of stitched thread disrupts and plays on the surface creating subtle shifts in rhythm, colour, and light. This double self-portrait is about the artist’s experience of living with chronic disease in which drug induced delirium often conjure spectres and phantoms. A half-remembered moment when the fear of sleep loomed large and the coming of another day seemed both a gift and a curse.
Gerda Roper
I love the painting by Munch ‘Between Clock and Bed ” . Clocks allegedly sign post the non immortal qualities of life, by drawing attention to the limited time left to one. ‘Twixt Clock and Coffee’ celebrates the quiet and worthwhile pleasure of an unhurried morning coffee.
Ruth Thomas
“My studio in the Vale of Clwyd looks out over a landscape of fields, woods and the Clwydian hills. In summer, swallows fly past, searching for insects. Birds are the wild creatures we see and hear most; while other animals are elusive, birds are all around us, connecting us to the natural world. Birds have inspired my recent prints, as have the feathers found while out walking. In ‘Swallow II’, feathers were collaged to make a collagraph printing plate, which was carefully inked and passed through my etching press to transfer the image onto paper.”
Eloise Govier
This drawing is developed from sketches made at a Y Fari Lwyd performance at Sain Ffagan. Here, characters are imagined and lively in celebration. The sense of celebration is heightened by the pattern of squares on the fabrics which seem to move ecstatically across the surface of the paper.
Stephanie Tuckwell
An exploration of the intrinsic qualities of inks, their fluidity and transparency, which contrast with the defined edges of collage. Forms and shapes dance to find their own rhythm, sometimes dissolving into a space whilst others are interrupted by a line, mark or form. These processes are orchestrated to create images somewhere between abstraction and figuration.
Harriet Chapman
Our future? Parlour under the consequences of climate change. Inspired by inherited belongings and the spaces that the artist lived in as a child, however the setting of this interior is in the context of Global Warming. Here is a surreal scene where belongings have been propelled as the room fills up with water. A meeting of the past and the future.
Francesca Hughes Neal
This work is about painting itself and its sensorial possibilities.
Starting with remembered moments, the natural environment, bodily sensations, instinct, the work develops slowly with shapes, colour arrangements and gestural marks.
Multiple layers with colours sometimes mixed on the surface in translucent glazes. Some areas are hidden or rubbed back - the process of removal and erasure as important as the painterly expressions to create paintings that draw in the viewer by triggering unconscious perceptual and emotional responses.
Dottie-May Aston
Bull, Blind to the Red Flag
What is happening in this painting? The bull would rather have a nice cup of tea than do what is expected and fight. The delicacy of the china and female face contrasts with the hard form of the bull and its aggressive stance – a suggestion perhaps that people aren’t always what they seem.
Lisa Carter Grist
Often my paintings will coalesce together in pairs or sets and reach out to each other beyond their own edges not unlike thought and imagination that can run wild with connections.
Dorry Spikes
“Memory painting of night walks home on the old monk’s track connecting Strata Florida with the sea
This painting is also influenced by drawings I made in the landscape while listening to archive recordings of upland hill-farming communities. Displaced by postwar forestry commission plantations, these people speak of premonitions, corpse candles and life before paved roads.
I've always loved exploring those ruins and stones, but hearing these voices gave me a deeper understanding of the hidden layers of home.”
James Moore
“There's something about sitting next to a window and looking out at the landscape. It's an opportunity to daydream and let your mind wander into a state of deep thinking. Some of my best ideas and daydreams happen here. I've been using paint to try and capture the feeling of looking through windows, to show the space between the interior & the exterior. The paintings also try to hold onto moments. Events from a few months ago feel locked away in a different life.”
Jo Berry
A figure can be seen from a side view, sitting down, bent forward and with long hair obscuring their face. The painting is softly blurred, painted with a limited pallet in purple and pink colours. Visual interference is included in the painting to make it clear that a found image has been used as source material.
Andre Stitt
A response to the current conflicts in Ukraine, Gaza, and Yemen. I use a familiar method of placing a motif in the centre foreground of the plane - abstracted, flat, angular blocks hinting at oblique forms and structures. These are layered onto a background which is loose and textured – through a variety of techniques, even placing the dried canvas in the washing machine. The result is a chaotic backdrop contrasting with the hard edge, threatening yet still central form.
Anthony Evans
A story based on the journey from Graigwen, above Pontypridd, down to the town and to the Sardis Road rugby field or 'The House of Pain.' A trip that would normally take place on a Wednesday night - walking down from the Graigwen in the company of friends and seeing the stadium under a bright light in the distance and that feeling that this was a perfect night.
Zena Blackwell
The title sums up the predicament in the painting – it’s Saturday, you have time off work to relax and have a lie-in, but the washing awaits. The look on her face is ambiguous – will she or won’t she have it done by the end of the day?!
Meinir Mathias
Dwylo gleision’ explores the social pressures on Welsh speaking communities in rural Wales. The weight of history and how that affects our identity is brought forward in this piece as the artist places herself in the painting, her hands stained blue from the treachery of the blue books.
The pressures felt in rural communities with rising house prices and a struggling economy, force many to migrate to towns, cities and further afield. This impacts on the psyche and social structure of Welsh communities and the Welsh language. The 'Welsh not' below the female figure draws a link to this and illustrates how societal shifts can have a ripple effect on our native language and cultural identity.
There is a colourful playful chaos in this piece, yet the scene is filled with tension and movement and an interplay of power dynamics are challenged as the hare chases the dog.
A figure with a Welsh hat, symbolic of a 'Rebecca Rioter' in Welsh history delicately cradles a starling, a migratory bird known for its resilience. The juxtaposition of rebellious Welsh iconography and the small bird creates a sense of paradox and invites the viewer to contemplate themes of activism, protest and transformation.
David Robinson
“To each sea bather their own community. In Porthcawl, the 'professional' ones, the brave ones who wear their float and cap, swim from the harbour behind the Jennings building when the tide is high. I admire their commitment, to swim in cold water across the entire bay to the far end of the beach. Figurative painting is the best vehicle for me to convey something of the energy, friendship and humor I have discovered in Porthcawl. I would like to remind people not only of the coastal beauty of South Wales, but also the importance of our social interactions: appreciating the small conversations that keep Wales alive."
Guto Llyr Davies
The PT Stool is a response to the huge job loss at the Port Talbot steelworks. The industrial aesthetic of the area echoes through the three authoritative steel legs, reflecting the steelworks' vital role in the community, economy and landscape of the area. The black oxidation process on the stool represents the mark the work has left on society. There are two thousand and eight hundred nails, each representing a worker. It's a grim echo of past battles, a reminder of the closure of the mines.
Ruth Harries
Dwelling is a sculptural installation which reflects on a house ;a place of birth & death & the subtle & intimate traces of life within it, a reflection on the transience of being & our right of passage. Materials reference construction & building materials, as well as interior soft furnishings and textiles. Absence & memory are requisite and integral.
Llyr Evans
On my journey around Argentian, I met Billy who lives in one of the houses originally built in Trevelin – Billy (84) is holding a photo of himself aged 18 years old.
Beth Leahy
A family portrait of women and the generations of women before them from Aberdare, Mountain Ash and Abercynon. Painted in a collage style, reflecting the process of looking through family photographs, remembering the wallpaper of a grandparents house, or a dress a long passed relative used to wear. The portrait also plays on the traditional image of a Welsh woman in her hat and shawl with humour and love.
Ieuan Lewis
The “Welsh Not” was extensively used in Welsh schools to try and kill the Welsh language through fear and the might of the cane. It was partially successful.
Haydn Denman
Many people in Wales have heard of and commemorate the tragedies which occurred in Senghenydd, Gresford and Aberfan. But the industrial landscape of Wales is dotted with locations which witnessed mining disasters. Barely a week passes without a date commemorating one of these tragedies during the history of coal mining in Wales. This photograph is from a series documenting these sites.
Anthony Stokes
Notice the repairs made over the passage of time to keep alive the hope of intended adventures, which are now out of reach in a time of austerity. In another photograph two plastic sheds store items that may or may not have a future use. But damage has occurred to one shed - like a broken promise - which renders a good intention almost useless.
Morgan Griffith
“Since graduating in 2003 both collage and painting have featured in the artist's practice. Often merging both within the works - painting over certain areas, or scratching away to reveal old surfaces created over time and incorporating these hidden marks into new work.
A ‘Descent into the Maelstrom’, along with other work in this series represents a new vigour in process and mood, after years of dealing with mental health. Tunnels, portals and voids represent a way out, a salvation; a way back from the brink.”
Erin Donnelly
This work explores the idea of exposure from opposing vantage points. We are being watched and are watching. Our awareness of being on view in a domestic or otherwise personal space when it is dark and the lights are on. Here the same room is presented from two different viewpoints.
Susan Adams
‘Plan for the Asylum’ emerges from the collaborative project ‘A Private Land’ exploring stories surrounding the former Mid Wales Hospital at Talgarth which began life as Brecon and Radnor Asylum. Over the past 24 years it has been gradually crumbling into the ground. The cycles of the natural world in the animation are interrupted by the arrival of the ‘butterfly plan’ asylum, to be ultimately absorbed by nature itself a hundred years on.
Rhys Aneurin
Architectural changes to the appearance of central Cardiff - often decided by prioritising economy at the expense of the city's identity, culture and people - can evoke feelings of alienation. By documenting, deconstructing and re-fitting the aesthetic of the capital's day-to-day civic landscapes to its roots within geometry, texture and colour, Aneurin's sculptural paintings question the ideals of identity and loneliness that traditionally define a city – and the feelings of belonging and alienation that define citizens' relationship with their area.
Richard Bevan
Ring: A gold cast of my great grandmother's wedding ring. The ring was worn by my grandfather after his mother’s early death, until one day it was lost. It was eventually found at the back of the fire, presumably having fallen off when adding coal. The copy is worn on the little finger of my right hand.
Drawing of a big sentence (sweater): My daughter produced a “drawing of a sentence” while being introduced to writing in her reception class in primary school. The work records this brief understanding of language where letters and words are shapes and marks detached from the meanings that would later become associated with them.
Edition available in Small, Medium and Large
Jon Pountney, The Patternistas, a Lindsay Bonaccorsi
Sense of place has always been integral to Pountney's work, and more so in recent years. Eglwysilan, and the Common, and the Aber valley, were places of inspiration and refuge for him through difficult times from 2020, and ideas coalesced around how to work in the space. Inspired by the history, folklore, and particularly the aura of the area, he wanted to reflect how people are linked to places and came up with the idea of camouflage. This allows a person and a place to blend and become indivisible.
A collaboration between artist Jon Pountney, designers The Patternistas and television costume designer Lindsay Bonaccorsi. The camouflage is a bespoke pattern based on the environment of the Aber Valley and Eglwysilan, and the garment is a combination of modern parka and the silhouette of a monks habit, referring to the early Christian history of Eglwysilan. Wearing the garment allows residents to become the 'Spirit of Place'.
Laura Thomas
Laura uses threads as lines to evoke the world around her whether that be the movement of water, the edge of a hill-scape where land meets sky, or the minutiae within coastal strata’s and sand patterns. Her work celebrates the innate character of yarn, which informs how it is to be used to create the resulting woven work. Whether it be its heavy metallic lustrousness or its dry inflexibility or its smooth pliability.
A visual meditation; gentle rhythms, glimpses beyond the surface and evocative textures - a welcome antidote against the chaos and uncertainty of recent times.
Zillah Bowes
The photographic series The Unasking of Trees explores the relationship between humans and nature in the metropolitan environment. Vulnerable and neglected, powerful and all-encompassing, trees are closely examined within the context of the climate crisis and biodiversity loss. This work asks the viewer to re-evaluate their relationship with urban and suburban trees, to value their importance in our future for providing oxygen, carbon storage, soil stabilisation and for wildlife.
Carl Chapple
Paintings made in collaboration with Ballet Cymru Pre-Professional dancers Amy Groves and Kasia Sambrook. Chapple draws and paints from life and has been working with Ballet Cymru for many years, capturing the graceful and dynamic movements that the human form is capable of.
Louise Short
The Devil’s Coach Horses (2023) is a set of four pinhole photographs. An old paint tin was used as the camera. The negatives were made using sixty year old photographic paper, often fogged and blotchy, adding to their aura of otherworldliness.
The setting is the graveyard of Capel Bethel in Cwmrheidol, a Wesleyan meeting place built in1872. The Wesleyans’ aniconism is playfully challenged in this set of images. The Devils Coach Horses are pulling an empty carriage, heading up to Devils Bridge to pick up passengers on their Grand Tour of Wales. Devils coach horses are a common species of the Rove Beetle family. Rove implies a journey with no specific destination, wandering hither and thither.
Caitlin Jenkins
The Ox-eye daisy evokes fond memories of the field in front of the family pottery which was awash with these daisies throughout my childhood. Cae Ladi Gwyn is the vernacular name of the field – folklore tells us the name has derived from ‘The Ghost of the White Lady’ who is said to walk the moors and Priory of Ewenny. White Lady is an alternative name for the Ox-eye daisy.
The humble much aligned dandelion has been the gardener’s enemy for many years, invasive and prolific, the first job of spring - try to eradicate it. Yet it is a life source for our pollinators; an early spring flowering and also the last to disappear in late autumn. It is a spectacle of continuous renewal from golden yellow petals to the translucent delicate seed heads.
Dutch Elm disease wove its way across Wales, the order came to fell the elm, I remember it well as I was inconsolable, how could such cruelty be meted out. My feelings were compounded in later years when the disastrous action was deemed unnecessary. When my own Bay tree grew into a magnificent specimen it was rooted too close to the house and would have to be loped, it was my decision. Having drawn this tree many times before, it’s now scarred and exposed; revealing last year’s blackbird nest added to my sense of guilt and sadness. The tree remembers.
Haf Weighton
The concept of a charabanc – a vehicle carrying a number of people, all shapes and sizes resonates with my work. The charabanc offered little or no protection to the passengers in the event of an overturning incident and had a high centre of gravity when loaded as everyone sat upstairs. They traversed steep and windy roads from the Welsh valleys to coastal towns – often leading to fatal accidents. The people on the charabanc’s were seated looking outwards and would have been face to face with the upper parts of buildings on their journeys between the valleys and Barry island.
Catrin Jones
This is a section from one of five glass waiting room screens designed for Grange University Hospital in Gwent. Each is a celebration of the act of walking and of the rich and varied landscapes of the area including Llanfoist, the Gwent Levels, Tintern Abbey, Pontypool Park, and the post industrial landscape of Blaenafon. A visual record of a walk, including a historical map of the route, the skyline visible at each location and other small details.
Aurora Trinity Collective
Aurora Trinity Collective hold weekly creative sessions in Cardiff that are a safe held space for women. Many artists in the collective have lived experience as refugees and those seeking asylum in Wales. The work of the Collective often considers personal narratives, traditions and knowledges.
The Friendship Banners were created as a statement of solidarity and togetherness. There are 8 in total and they were designed with the idea of being held up, and walked or raised. They were created over a period of a year. The process involved the whole collective. Dyeing the original textile, and using a variety of techniques, screen printing with traditional cultural patterns, block printing, and embroidery to work on the surface of the banners.