Exhibitions

 ENTRIES ARE OPEN FOR THE 10TH WELSH ARTIST OF THE YEAR COMPETITION

THIS summer the 10th Welsh Artist of the Year will be announced in a special anniversary ceremony at St David's Hall, Cardiff - and it could be you.

Entry is now open to all artists born, working and living in Wales hoping to join the celebrated list of prize-winners.

Last year Butetown-based photographer Tim Freeman took the title with his subversive landscape photograph Hidden System, which showed a giant pipeline cutting through a pastoral British countryside scene in an prophetic statement on the way man is damaging the natural landscape.

This year he returns to join the panel of judges which includes one of Wales' best known painters Iwan Bala; Jane Phillips, director of the Mission Gallery, Swansea; Lynne Crompton, curator of Oriel Q, Narberth, and Ruth Cayford, Curator of the Welsh Artist of the Year Exhibition.

The competition, which is organised by St David's Hall, Cardiff, was originally set up as a one-off to celebrate the new Millennium, to promote and celebrate the wealth of artistic talent in Wales.

Since Cardiff-based painter Brendan Stuart Burns won the first title in 2000, more than 5000 artists have taken part and past winners such as Sally Moore, Pip Lawrence and Walter Keeler have continued to forge international reputations for their work.

This year a total prize of £2,000 is on offer for the most innovative and talented Welsh artists and will be split across seven categories: painting, sculpture, photography, applied arts, printmaking, drawing and student.

Since winning last year Tim Freeman says his artist profile has increased with two solo shows at St David's Hall and Chapter, Cardiff and many sales through galleries and private patrons.

The Yorkshire-bred photographer also had his work shortlisted for the final of the Northern Printmakers Exhibition and he was invited to lecture to art students at the University College of Wales, Howard Gardens, Cardiff.

"There's no doubt winning Welsh Artist of the Year opened doors for me. As a judge I will be looking for quality of the finished piece of work and how well the artist communicates their subject," he said.

The winner will be announced in a ceremony at St David's Hall, Cardiff, on Sunday, June 20th. The winning entries will be exhibited alongside 100 others making the shortlist in the Welsh Artist of the Year Exhibition, which runs from June 20 to August 6.

Exhibition curator Ruth Cayford said: "With this being the 10th anniversary we are hoping 2010 will be the strongest year for entries. We've had some amazing winners through the last decade and the competition's reputation has grown in the art community in Wales and throughout the UK"

HOW TO ENTER:

The competition is open to any artists over the age of 18, living and working in Wales, and any Welsh artists living in the UK.

The closing date for entries is February 24, 2010. Judging will take place in March.

Entry forms are available to download from the website at www.stdavidshallcardiff.co.uk

or by contacting Ruth Cayford, Exhibition Officer, Foyer Galleries, St David's Hall, The Hayes, Cardiff, CF10 1SH. Email: rcayford@cardiff.gov.uk

For further information, images or interviews with last year's winners, please contact

Ruth Cayford, Exhibition Officer, Foyer Galleries, St David's Hall,The Hayes, Cardiff

Email: rcayford@cardiff.gov.uk. Phone: 029 20878706

Or Alison Stokes, Freelance Publicist for Welsh Artist of the Year. Tel: 07817 990771

Email: a.stokes2@sky.com

Read the entry instructions thoroughly before filling out the application form

ENTRY INSTRUCTIONS

ENTRY FORM

Robert Greetham

January 15th-12th February

Semana Santa

Semana Santa is an exhibition of recent wotk by South Wales- based photographer and artist Robert Greetham. Since 2004 he has been  woking on an ongoing multi- project  based  on Sema Santa  or Holy Week in Spain. Semana Santa is celebrated throughout Spain every Easter; in cities such as Malaga and Sevillie the scale of the opulence of the celebrations is breathtaking  with thousands of pople taking part in highly formailised processions. Once of the most striking feature  of the processions are the Penitentes; tall hooded figures whose identitities remain unknown. Sometimes mistakenly confused with the Ku Klux Klan, they are nevertheless mysterious and occasionally forbidden presences who not only demonstrate the continuity of the past within the present but also the enduring power of ritual, tradition and faith. Pervading all is the head mix of insense drums and devotional song. The exhibition, which included photographs, paintings and mixed-media pieces also reflects Greetham’s fascination with the symbol and found objects as Cutural signifiers.

EIRIAN LLWYD- An Exhibition of recent prints January 15th - February 12th

Eirian seriously began to pursue her career as an artist in 1997 when she began a part time degree course in Coleg Menai, Bangor. She transferred to a full time course in UWIC Cardiff two years later, and graduated in Fine Art in 2001. Whilst at Cardiff, she began her interest in printmaking under the encouragement of her art tutor, Tom Piper. Since graduating, she has been a full time artist/printmaker. Eirian has exhibited extensively throughout Wales, Ireland and beyond.

Artist Statement

"Most of my prints are to do with a sense of place and have been inspired by Anglesey and the impact of moving to the island had on me. There are a significant number of prehistoric and Celtic relics on Anglesey reminding us of our roots and place in history and how a people and identity and language can survive. I enjoy the challenge and possibilities that printmaking offers me as an artist. I also find inspiration in poetry, most especially the works of Professor Gwyn Thomas.

I use a range of traditional printmaking processes such as etching on copper, colograph, stone lithography, woodcut, linocut and monoprint".

Bylchau.

February 19th – March 27th

A powerful exhibition of the work of the recipient of the Gold Medal for Fine Art at the National Eisteddfod of Wales, 2009.
His surfaces are layered with paint that overflows, dripping. Congested, thick impasto paint has been pushed and forced to create a painting, which is also an object of desire. These paintings are layered time after time until the upper layer explodes and transforms from its volcanic creation into a vivid landscape. These are eruptions of colour and beauty intended to transfix the viewer.

Iwan Bala states that Lewis ‘Is at the height of his game- his paintings are poised at an interesting juncture, where the boundary between the painting as illusion and the painting as object is blurred, but still active. Beautiful and original artefacts are the result of his constant engagement with these elements, and with the material of paint and surface. The result can be seen as a form of landscape, or an object of sculptural interest, or a lush and often intense examination of colour fields and forms’

There will also be a craft showcase of the work of Lowri Davies- the recipient for the Gold Medal for Craft and Design 2009 at the National Eisteddfod for Wales.

ELFYN LEWIS, ALCHEMIST.

Painting; that direct engagement with the materials of it, that total involvement with colour, has at times been side-lined by the new media of film, video, photography, installation and everything you can think of. But painters still work, paintings are still made and account for the greatest majority of fine art sold in galleries throughout the world. Painting still speaks directly, through the eyes and into the soul.
‘Do you think the imitation of natural colours in representing flesh and drapery is of little importance? This, the marble sculptor cannot achieve, nor express the gracious glance of black and azure eyes, shining with their rays of love. He cannot show the colour of blonde hair, nor the glint of armour, nor a dark night, nor a storm at sea with bolts of lightning, nor a town on fire, nor the rosy colour of early dawn with its rays of gold and purple: in short, [the sculptor] cannot represent sky, sea, earth, mountains, woods, meadows, gardens, rivers, towns or houses, all of which the painter is able to do'
This Italian Renaissance statement virtually lays out an agenda for the future of Western painting and its emphasis on colour as a means of representing the natural world. But this is not the only way colour is used in painting. Elfyn Lewis has chosen a singular path in that traditional medium of painting, finding within it a contemporary relevance and a highly focused ‘process' approach to produce beautiful objects that, whilst being abstract and formal, are also able to evoke elements of landscape and memory. The series of work which won him the Gold Medal for Fine Art at The National Eisteddfod of Wales in Bala in 2009 showed him at the height of his ‘game' and succeeding in overturning that much quoted old chestnut of abstract expressionism; ‘what you see is what you get'.
In Lewis' work there is, of course, ‘what you see', that is unavoidable; thick layers of paint, congealing at the edges, overflowing the restrictions of the square or oblong canvas. There is an almost edible scrumptiousness about this paint. But ‘what you get' is not always reliant on the materiality of this paint, but on the patterns that the human brain (the viewer) organizes into a narrative, into the contours of a landscape, or an evocation of a winter's day.
The great Scottish painter Alan Davie has said of his own work; In painting as in alchemy, one is involved in a magical transmutation of matter into an indefinable spiritual essence, and like the alchemists, I have in the end reached some enlightenment in the realization that my work entails a kind of symbolic self involvement in the very process of life itself. And when the magic happens, the base materials have become pure gold.
Elfyn Lewis might not put it exactly like that, but when his process of working is succeeding, when the ‘magic' takes place, the results are the same; pure gold.

LOWRI DAVIES

February 19th – March 27th

Lowri Davies’ Welsh heritage is a major source of inspiration. Vibrant illustrations of birds, ‘traditional’ landscapes, floral and fauna adorn her own distinct bone china tableware designs of tea sets, vessels and vases. These reference typical china displays on Welsh dressers and ceramic souvenirs.

Recent production techniques using bone china are influenced by her period of study on the MA in Ceramic Design course at Staffordshire University.