Exhibitions

Welsh Artist of the Year 2012The Welsh Artist of the Year competition is in its twelfth year, it was founded in the Millennium Year to promote and celebrate the wealth of artistic talent that exists in Wales. Initiated by St David's Hall, the competition provides a valuable platform for artists to exhibit their work in the heart of Welsh Capital.

This year's selection Panel is Carwyn Evans, Peter Finnemore, Karen MacKinnon, Jacqueline Poncelet and Ruth Cayford.

Deadline for applications is February 22nd but the work does not need to be handed in until April 12 in Cardiff. Other pick up points are available across Wales on various dates. Please download PDF's of Application details and Entry Forms for full details.

2012 Application Details
2012 WAOTY Entry Form

For more information  please email RCayford@cardiff.gov.uk or call Ruth Cayford on 029 20878706 

ANDRE STITT

PROG. VOL.1.

St. David's Hall, Cardiff

Dates: 13 Jan - Feb 10th 2012

The Paintings:

These small paintings made between 2008-2011 can be viewed as ‘ambient' works that in their execution rely on a certain sonic atmosphere in the studio. This soundscape is derived from my habit of blasting out all sorts of well-known, obscure, and down right obscene ‘Prog-Rock' during periods of decompression after completing sessions on my other more regular large scale paintings.

While these smaller paintings do not derive an imagery or have a direct relationship to the visual landscape often alluded to, or inhabited by ‘Prog' (as revealed on album cover art and posters of the early 1970's) they might be seen to occupy a certain ambient zone that benefits from the sonic experience of ‘Prog' at it's most experimental, atonal, schizoid or ethereal. In these terms the paintings should be viewed as subliminal passages; a testing out, and a progressive shift that reflects the freedom of the artists studio environment at its most playful.

For example, the result in the form of these small paintings, may be a fusion not unlike what one might experience upon synthesising the improvisatory electronics of some of Prog or Krautrock's ‘cosmische musik'; what Erik Davis defines as "not just an object but a quality of conciousness".1

The Sound:

My own sonic landscape for these works, which were executed at my studio in Grangetown, Cardiff, veers and wobbles wildly all over the place. For me this landscape is fore-grounded by the early experiments in electronics by Louis & Bebe Barron with their incredible soundtrack to the film ‘The Forbidden Planet', hearing Joe Meek's ‘Telstar' in 1962 when I was four, the theme from Dr Who by Delia Derbyshire and the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, ‘Fireball XL5', Barbarella, the proto-prog United States of America's eponymous album (1967) and ‘Electronic Storm' by White Noise (1968). The classic ‘prog' period for me seems to begin around 69/70 thru to about 1975. This was also the beginning of my own rites of passage and teenage experimentation with music, lifestyle, intellectual, artistic, and cultural aspiration.

"Like all good rock-n-roll, progressive rock was a reaction to what came before it; one that took pop music over the top, one that was consciously highbrow, and one that relished in the enormity of it all. Yet progressive rock was neither unilaterally one way or the another; it was as diverse and multi-faceted as its constituents, and at its peak, as fresh and original as anything that came before." 2

While making these small collateral paintings in the studio, depending on mood and circumstance, I would crack on with a mix of what they used to call Progressive Blues/Rock. Maybe a bit of The Groundhogs, and the Edgar Broughton Band for instance just to get the body going. A painting session might thereafter develop with astonishing leaps and bounds through the often bonkers post-pastoral-blues-jazzy-watsat workouts of Jethro Tull, Focus, and Caravan, to the pomp prog of Yes and early Genesis, the ‘space rock' of Pink Floyd and Hawkwind, the fractured and orthopaedic shunting of Henry Cow, the lo-fo no- wave of Tractor, the proto metal brain bashing of King Crimson, Van Der Graaf Generator, and Magma; eventually ending up it's own back passage with the used car salesmen of the genre E.L.P., and so on; on through the prog portal to the obscure nether regions of Christian Prog as in Water Into Wine Band, or Northern Irish Prog: Fruupp anyone? This and more back-slapped with lashings of Krautrock: the cosmische Tangerine Dream,

prog-ambient innovators Cluster, Harmonia, Popol Vuh; the psych-skull-tubbing improvisations of Amon Düül ll, Guru Guru, Faust, Embryo; the proto-techno Kraftwerk and the motorik of the mighty Neu!

"Kosmische musik, in my mind, seems to be a crucial strand of the progressive psychedelic music that appeared in Germany in the early 1970's: an alternatively meditative and ferocious dissolution of boundaries that invoked, through sound or function or packaging, the unearthly otherworlds that link outer and inner space."3

The Execution: how the paintings were done and what they are

Each painting is on average 50x60cm with some larger at 100cm x100cm . These small paintings are different from my usual signature work which can be from 2metres x 3metres and upwards. All works are oil paint on linen. They are executed in a style that may be described as gestural abstraction, and/or ambiguous abstraction.

The Venue
When I think about St David's Hall I think of a connection to another time and space. Some of these same bands that have backgrounded my activity in the studio played reformation gigs here (The Groundhogs, Focus, Jethro Tull), there have also been all manner of Pink Floyd tribute bands and even a band called Prognosis (geddit?). In many ways St. David's Hall is the perfect venue for an old-timers' Prog Rock concert. Cardiff's premier concert hall was completed in the autumn of 1982, however, its architecture looks as it's from another time. More like early seventies brutalist mashed-up with eighties interior design unchic chic. It achieves without trying too hard an ambience of aspirational 1970's Blue Stratos Denim resurrected in big time beardy-weirdy Prog heaven.

Progressive rock (also referred to as prog rock or prog) is a subgenre of rock music4 that developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s as part of a "mostly British attempt to elevate rock music to new levels of artistic credibility."5John Covach, in Contemporary Music Review, says that many thought it would not just "succeed the pop of the 1960s as much as take its rightful place beside the modern classical music of Stravinsky and Bartók." 6 Progressive rock bands pushed "rock's technical and compositional boundaries" by going beyond the standard rock or popular verse-chorus-based song structures. The Oxford Companion to Music states that progressive rock bands "...explored extended musical structures which involved intricate instrumental patterns and textures and often esoteric subject matter."7 Additionally, the arrangements often incorporated elements drawn from classical, jazz, and world music. Instrumentals were common, while songs with lyrics were sometimes conceptual, abstract, or based in fantasy. Progressive rock bands sometimes used "concept albums that made unified statements, usually telling an epic story or tackling a grand overarching theme."8 Progressive rock developed from late 1960s psychedelic rock, as part of a wide-ranging tendency in rock music of this era to draw inspiration from ever more diverse influences. The term was initially applied to the music of bands such as Pink Floyd, King Crimson, Yes, Genesis, Jethro Tull and Emerson, Lake & Palmer, reaching its peak of popularity in the mid 1970s. Andre Stitt

1Davis, Erik, Kosmische, in Krautrock: Cosmic Rock and It's Legacy, pg.32, Black Dog 2009

2Snider, Charles, The Strawberry Brick Guide To Progressive Rock, Strawberry Bricks, Chicago 2007

3ibid

4Listening to the future: the time of progressive rock, 1968-1978, pp. 71-75

5Prog Rock-All Rock, AllMusic. 2007. Retrieved 2007-12-04.

6Informaworld.com, Covach, John. "Echolyn and American Progressive Rock." Contemporary Music Review 18.4 (1999):Web.

7 Popular music. Oxford Companion to Music. Accessed online on March 29, 2010.

8ibid

4-8 retrieved 26 June 2011 13.53 GMT http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_rock,

Welsh Artist of the Year 2011

 Fleece painter Paul Emmanuel is Welsh Artist of the Year 2011

A SWANSEA Valley-based artist who was inspired to paint sheep fleece collected from barbed wire fences near his farmhouse in the Brecon Beacons has been named Welsh Artist of the Year 2011.

Paul Emmanuel first had the idea for fleece painting while walking around the country lanes and fields surrounding his home and studio at Penycae. He now uses sheep fleece donated by his farming neighbours instead of canvas for his work He grooms and backcombs the wool with oil paint using hairdressing accessories like combs and hairbrushes instead of conventional art brushes to apply the paint.

His vibrant green fleece painting Penrhiwllythau, named after the farm which gave him the black Balwen fleece, beat 400 other art works to win the title and £2,000 prize.

Judge Emma Geliot said: ‘Paul Emmanuel's painted fleeces are eye-catching at first, but their meaning becomes apparent on closer inspection. They bring together a number of strands of his practice at a critical point in his career: his ongoing investigation of paint and colour and his interest in place/location. Through the use of the colours used to mark sheep on the hills around his rural home these strands are beautifully brought together.'

Paul, who was born in Maesteg and grew up in Port Talbot, said: ‘I'm thrilled to win. There is no other competition like it in Wales which profiles what is going on in the Welsh art world on an annual basis and it is fantastic to be part of it. This year things seem to be coming together for me. I am settled in my studio and not going to work anywhere else, so it's an important title to win and I hope it exposes my work to a wider audience.'

Paul explained the origins of his unique art: ‘I first started collecting fleece caught on barbed wire fences when I was out walking and tried to use them in my work, but the pieces were too small. Then I was talking to a barmaid in my local pub who said her grandmother owned a sheep farm. The next day a little 72-year-old woman turned up with six lovely full fleeces and that's when I started really getting stuck into working with the whole articles.'

‘Some critics have said that my work has a sexual connotation and I suppose that because of the hair they do relate to the body quite a lot. But I see them as hair-dos for sheep. By giving them names of local farms I try to keep their rural identity.'

Six other main prizes were presented by broadcaster Nicola Heywood-Thomas at the awards ceremony, which was held at St David's Hall, Cardiff, on Sunday, June 5.

Brecon-based silversmith Pamela Rawnsley won the Runner-up and Applied Arts Prize with her entry Three Vessels. The three large silver and gilded bowls are a more recent departure from the jewellery which has earned her international acclaim.

Judge and winner of the 2007 title Walter Keeler said: ‘Pamela's work took my breath away. It is rare for work of uncompromising precision, which is spectacularly well made to communicate with such poetry, to breath such life into cold metal.'

The award for Drawing went to former curator of the British Art Show Jacqueline Poncelet for her painting Bryn Ogwyr, which was inspired by her home in Ogmore Vale.

German photographer Eva Bartussek, who is a mature PhD student at Swansea Metropolitan University, was presented the Photography Prize for Welsh Dresser, a photograph of her eight-month-pregnant friend taken in a field at night.

French artist Pascal-Michel Dubois, who is now based in Nelson won the Printmaking Prize for Meteor III, a painstakingly detailed digital photo montage 360 degree panorama of a tree which seems to float in the air.

The Student Prize went to Swansea Metropolitan Architectural Glass MA student Rhian Haf of Gwythevin, Abergele for her glass sculpture Glass, Light and Space - a group of glass houses cast using the ancient lost wax technique

A new category prize of Mixed Media was won by Aled Simons, Swansea for a collage titled The Arrangement

Exhibition curator Ruth Cayford said: ‘I hope this win brings Paul Emmanuel the recognition that he deserves. He breaks convention, pushes boundaries and challenges the way that paint is used- all with such integrity. Paul so deserves the title Welsh Artist of the Year 2011.'

The winning entries will form the centre piece of the Welsh Artist of the Year Exhibition 2011, which runs at St David's Hall, Cardiff, from Monday, June 6 until Saturday, August 6. The exhibition features the work of all the prize winners plus more than 80 other pieces to make the shortlist.

Pictures of selected entries available

WINNERS IN FULL

Overall Winner and Painting Prize:
Paul Emmanuel, Penycae, Swansea Valley
Title of exhibit: Penrhiwllythau (oil paint and hair lacquer on Balwen fleece)

Runner Up and Applied Arts Prize
Pamela Rawnsley, Llanfrynach, Brecon
Title of exhibit: Three Vessels (silver, oxide gilding)

Drawing:
Jacqueline Poncelet, Ogmore Vale
Title of exhibit: Bryn Ogwyr 2010 (gouache on water colour paper)

Photography
Eva Bartussek, Swansea
Title of exhibit: Welsh Dresser (photograph)

Printmaking
Pascal-Michel Dubois, Nelson, Treharris
Title of exhibit: Meteor III (digital photographic print)

Student:
Rhian Haf, Gwythevin, Abergele
Title of exhibit: Glass, Light and Space (glass)

Mixed Media
Aled Simons, Swansea
Title of exhibit: The Arrangement (medium collage)

Highly commended
Jacqueline Alkema, Cardiff
Title of exhibit: Molly (oil on canvas)

Claire Curneen, Cardiff
Title of exhibit: Daphne (porcelain, gold lustre)

James and Tilla Waters, Llansadwrn, Camarthenshire
Title of exhibit: Five sketches (ceramic)

Megan Broadmeadow, Conwy
Title of exhibit: Anthem (video)

New Media & Sculpture Prize
Not awarded

 
Notes to editors
The Welsh Artist of the Year was founded during the millennium year to promote and celebrate the wealth of artistic ability in Wales. Originally intended as a one-off event, it is now in its 11th year.
The competition was open to any artists over the age of 18, living and working in Wales, and any Welsh artists living in the UK.

Judging Panel:
Walter Keeler, ceramicist and winner of the Welsh Artist of the Year 2007; Emma Geliot, deputy editor of Blown magazine, Chris Brown, artist, musician and co-director of g39 gallery; Owen Griffiths, winner of the Drawing Prize in 2009 and exhibition curator Ruth Cayford.

Paul Emmanuel Profile

Artist Paul Emmanuel is a firm believer in his surroundings dictating the mood of his art.
From his rural studio next door to his farm at Nantyffin, Penycae in the Brecon Beacons, which he shares with his wife, Emma, two horses and three dogs, he has created his most recent and inspired body of work Fleece Paintings.
They are exactly what they say, natural, freshly -sheared sheep fleeces, inspired by the farming tradition of marking sheep. Each fleece is drawn across an artist's stretcher, more normally used for mounting canvas, then groomed, back-combed and preened using conventional hairdressing implements instead of art brushes to apply the oil paint. First shown at Oriel Myrddin Gallery in Carmarthen earlier this year, the paintings are intriguing forms that jump off the walls and take their names from local farms. For each painting Paul is inspired by the wool itself.
Fleece Painting is the closest Paul has come to conventional painting in a career which began some 25 years ago when he studied art at London's Goldmiths College alongside Brit artists Damien Hirst and Craig Wood. Following his graduation, the Maesteg-born Port Talbot-raised artist returned to Wales to curate at the Mission Gallery, Swansea and teach art to inmates at Swansea prison before getting his own studio in Swansea. In 2002 he was chosen for the first of two British Council international artist residencies in China, Taiwan and the USA. His work focuses on different ways of using paint. In his earlier works he used his body to daub paint onto surfaces (New Painting) and filmed himself releasing the contents of paint tubes at a painstakingly slow speed while his fingers cramped (Green Finger Mixture). In his 2004 piece Psycho he used paint as part of a live performance as he lay on his back on the floor with a mouthful of oil paint and answered a psychiatrist's basic question. The grotesque images of him choking while attempting to answer the questions were projected onto a wall for the audience to watch. It was screened in Taiwan, Swansea and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles.
More recently he has been working with John Cale on Dyddiau Du/Dark Days at the Venice Biennale and on tour in Australia, Germany and Wales and his Green Finger Mixture video-based work is due to tour Australia later this year.

For further information and images; please contact
Ruth Cayford, Exhibition Officer,Foyer Galleries, St David's Hall, the Hayes, and Cardiff, CF10 ISH
 Email: rcayford@cardiff.gov.uk
 Tel: 029 20878706

Or
Alison Stokes, Welsh Artist of the Year Publicity
 Email: a.stokes2@sky.com
 Tel: 07817 990771 (mobile)

Archive

Aled Rhys Hughes - A Turning Tide

Exhibition contines until May 25th

 A Turning Tide: The Sea, Photography and Wales

Some of the earliest photographs taken in Wales were of the sea. Whilst mastering the brand new technology of photography in the nineteenth century, John Dillwyn Llewellyn set about photographing ships at Swansea's docks at a time when the sea was a ‘super-highway' for transport, trade and knowledge. In 1855 Llewellyn was awarded a silver medal of honour at the Exposition Universelle Paris for four photographs taken on the theme of motion, including a photograph that captured incoming waves at Three Cliffs Bay on the Gower Peninsular. In more recent years, as photography took up an important position in the contemporary arts, photographers such as Aled Rhys Hughes started to interrogate the Welsh coast in more expansive ways. Whilst Hughes' exhibition A Turning Tide - Tro'r Trai can be interpreted as being in and of Wales, he is quick to make the point that, "Although each of the photographs...was made in Wales, the stories they tell are true of coastlines throughout the world".

In Hughes' photograph of the decayed hull of a ship at Marros he presents a proposition opposite to that of Llewellyn's award-winning picture. Through a deliberately extended shutter speed, we are presented with a ghosting sea that caresses the eroding remnants of the ship. Whilst this might not clearly show what a wave looks like, it clearly conveys a sense of what waves can do. This might present a clue for viewers approaching Hughes' photographs that whilst they are at once of a particular place, they are always also of something less tangible. The art of the work is to bring us to the point of contemplation whilst not telling us what we should see.

The picture of a land formation projecting into the sea at Castell Martin reminds us that the places Hughes photographs represent amorphous boundaries, and that even the more solid of these are fragile and susceptible to erosion and decay. Nothing is fixed even the title of the exhibition ‘A Turning Tide - Tro'r Trai' reflects notions of transience. Hughes notes that boundaries can be, "a defence against invasion while at the same time enticing an invasion of another kind". The notion that things remain open and that different interpretations are possible in the work is important to Hughes. There is also a suggestion of standing at the edge looking and then contemplating something beyond comprehension. The photograph of a ship leaving the river Neath pertinently reminds us that from the land, what lies beyond the horizon is not fully knowable. As if to extend that idea further, the timbers emerging from beneath the surface of the waters may suggest that we should consider whether our vision might also preclude other dimensions.

Hughes' photographs engage in more existential concerns too. An important aspect of his work is the decision to present viewers with large and detailed pictures, which are made possible by the use of a large format camera. For all that we exist in the twenty-first century digital age, Hughes' film camera is more akin to that used by John Dillwyn Llewellyn. Whilst these large pictures might appear to simply follow a trend in the exhibition of contemporary photography in recent decades, the device is more pointedly used by Hughes to create what might be described as a cinematic viewing experience. Simply, the pictures have more detail than can be consumed at a glance - there are decisions that we as viewers have to make such as what distance to stand at, what requires a closer look, and so on.

Aled Rhys Hughes has worked as a photographer since the mid-1980s; most of that time he has produced photographic art and has been recognised by being awarded the Gold Medal for Fine Art at the National Eisteddfod. Having grown up in the Rhondda with Welsh as his first language he has consistently produced work that reflects the influence of his upbringing in the ‘Manse' and his strong feelings for the language and culture of Wales. Previous projects have explored his relationship to the land and sea in which he has captured residual elements that reflect metaphysical concerns. Earlier photographs featured in the book Môr Goleuni Tir Tywyll such as Creigiau Elegug, Castell Martin, featuring rocks and surf, have an affinity with the work of photographers such as John Blakemore who photographed the Welsh coast in the 1970s. Blakemore regarded his own black and white photographs of rocks and mist-like surf as "the dynamic of the landscape, its spiritual and physical energy, its livingness, its essential mystery".

There is a sense of a deep and warm affection for the places Hughes responds to in his photographs. Yet the exhibition A Turning Tide - Tro'r Trai is far from nostalgic, Hughes' photographs reflect the concerns of today using today's photographic language. What perhaps makes this contemporary work remarkable is that through carefully balancing the often competing characteristics of photography, Hughes has produced pictures that not only document some of the most outstanding places in Wales, but they also invoke more universal concerns about the multiplicity of relationships we continue to have with the sea.

Paul Cabuts 2011

Artemisia

"Maybe the existing forms of art for the ideas men have had are inadequate for the ideas women have."' Susana Torre, 1976

An Exhibition of contemporary Women Artists who practice in Wales, celebrating the ideas they have in 2011

Curated by Ruth Cayford.

Artemisia Gentileschi lends her name to this extensive exhibition, which brings together the work of numerous women artists currently active in Wales. She was not only an extraordinary Renaissance artist, but also occupied a key role in the recovery of women artists' history begun by feminists around forty years ago, who sifted through centuries of neglect, not only to uncover forgotten women artists, but perhaps more importantly, they identified shared expressions for the women artists yet to come.
Art's forms and content have not been without issues for women artists, since both had been defined by male artists. It took a further ideological leap for women to shift from battling with exclusion to a positive questioning of approaches to creativity, emerging from a wish to express their differences, differently. That women might re-define art's practice by exploring what had hitherto been invisible or defined as ‘not art', produced some provocative work. Stylistic innovation was perhaps not the most important of these differences, the ‘ideas that women have' most certainly was. It became clear that historical frictions bound in to the two roles - woman and artist - presented them with unique challenges. What has become clearer now, is that these challenges have enriched their work.
Women's greater participation in art has transformed art, flipping the subtly nuanced labels sometimes used to relegate their work to obscurity in the Fine Arts (charming, decorative, domestic) entirely on their heads. Refusing hierarchies, they have explored (using that old feminist adage) the personal with the political, intimacy with the allegorical, sensitivity with edginess, the fragile with the dark, fantasy with fetish. In short their creative strategies are as diverse and multi-textured as women themselves, and are abundantly evidenced in this exhibition.
The complexity of human relationships, including self-identity, is navigated through memory and fantasy, and is just as likely to be intensely personal as it is universally symbolic. Desires for connection are also explored through responses to place or location, and might reference the landscape of history, or even pre-history, or the personal space of the domestic. The body, that well contested area, is still of immense importance to a number of the artists here, particularly evidenced through performance based art; its potential for ritual significance seems endless. Drawing is clearly immensely valued as a visualising tool, but no more so than stitching, printing, constructing, photographing, filming and mark making from the fragile to the urgent.
But never forget that whilst our recognition of the ideas and creativity which women have brought to art may seem a recent understanding, in truth Artemisia was already there; it is recognised that her intense portrayal of powerful women differed from interpretations by her male peers. The contest we now face, in a time when arts education is seriously threatened, is that of ensuring that the gains women artists have made in the past forty years are never underestimated and continue to influence art. This exhibition is a timely reminder that Artemisia's legacy needs to be wholeheartedly celebrated.

Sue Griffith.
Head of School of Contextual Studies & Fine Art.
Swansea Metropolitan University.

Featuring Sue Williams, Rozanne Hawksley, Catrin Webster, Di Setch, Dilys Jackson, Virginia Head, Rebecca Spooner, Adele Vye, Fern Thomas, Amanda Roderick, Gemma Copp, Anna Barrett, Jacqueline Alkema, Corrie Chiswell, Becky Adams, Susan Adams, Kathryn Ashill, Kathryn Campbell Dodd, Heather Eastes, Annie Giles Hobbs, Ruth Harries, Penny Hallas, Mary Husted,
Daphne Hurn, Ann Jordon, Tiff Oben, Luned Rhys Parri, Jane Taylor, Miranda Whall, Dawn Woolley, Sue Hunt, Rebecca Gould, Eirian Llwyd, Lisa Jones, Nicola O'Neill, Ruth McLees, Bella Kerr, Helen Booth, Jean Walcot, Jo Alexander, Wendy Couling, Su Roberts, Janet Walters and Lisa Tann.

 RUTH CAYFORD

Exhibitions Officer / Swyddog Arddangosfeydd

St David's Hall

Cardiff

CF10 1SH

Tel / Ffon 029 2087 8706

Fax / Ffacs 029 2087 8599

e-mail / e-bost RCayford@cardiff.gov.uk