Kena photographed at Elysium Studios, Orchard Street Swansea.
Elysium Artist Kena Brown’s work Father and Mother at ‘Beep’ 2020, High Street, Swansea.
Katie Trick
Katie Trick, Elysium artist with her work, ‘ And We’d Laze for Days and Days,’ Acrylic on Canvas, at ‘Beep’ 2020, High Street Swansea.
Recent work by Katie Trick. Katie was born in 1991. She attended the fine art foundation course at the Swansea School of Art and graduated in fine art – painting in Wimbledon College of Art/ University of the Arts London.
Tim Kelly
At last after twelve months of frustrating lockdown, I have photographed Tim Kelly and his powerful paintings in his Orchard Street, Elysium Artists Studios in Swansea.
There are plans for so much more, soon we will have Household Names and Bird House at the Elysium Bar and Gallery, Peter Spriggs at Oriel Q, Narberth and the found Gallery opening on the 27th April in Brecon.
John Abell
John Abell – Literary Atlas Wales – ‘Hiraeth for Beginners – ’ Becca and her Children – Newton House – Llandeilo – 2020
Writer – Tristan Hughes – Revenant (2008).
John Abell studied at the Camberwell College of Art, and now lives and works in Cardiff. He is well known for his large scale wood block prints, and colourful water colour painting, linocuts and etchings, that explore the love and lust of the human condition. He is photographed here at the opening of the Becca and her Children Exhibition at Newton House, Dinefwr, Llandeilo in January 2020.
Iwan Bala
Iwan Bala – Literary Atlas Wales – Bute St. Cardiff. 2018.
Enlli: A Learning Aid.
Twenty Thousand Saints (2008) ‘Intrigue on Bardsey Island’ – Fflur Dafydd.
Iwan Bala Artist, Writer and lecturer, born in Sarnau North Wales, studied Politics and Social Sciences at Aberystwyth University and Graduated with his MA in Cardiff. A member of the Becca Group he won the Gold Medal at the Bala National Eisteddfod. He has exhibited across Wales, China and the Czech Republic, Politically aware his c.v. reads like a National Directory.
Valerie Coffin Price
Valerie Coffin Price – Literary Atlas Wales – ‘A Rioter’s Walk’ – Cardiff – 2018.
Amy Dillwyn – The Rebecca Rioter (1880)
Valerie Coffin Price, Artist-letterer – sculptor was born in Bushey, Hertfordshire and moved to Wales in 1956.
She studied at the Winchester School of Art, Chelsea College and the City and Guilds of London Art School. Collaborating and cross arts working have been essential to her arts practice.
The folding sketchbook was a key element in the ‘ A Rioters Walk ‘ project’. She walked and sketched following the narrative of the novel. The twists and turns of a journey reflecting in the interplay of art and text.
Joni Smith
Joni Smith – Artist -‘Concrete Ribbon Road’ – Norwich – 2018.
Lloyd Jones Mr Vogel (2004 ).
Joni Smith is a contemporary artist known for her paper installations that explore and rework the map. Originally from Leamington Spa, she was raised in the hills of North Wales and is currently residing in Norwich – Joni’s fascination with a sense of place threads throughout her work.
‘I see my practice as a series of quasi scientific investigations contrasting installation and paper based work.
Originally from Leamington Spa, Joni Smith was brought up in North Wales, she graduated with an MA in Textile culture at Norwich University College of the Arts where she now lives.
Her intricately hand cut paper work and Installation Art, is influenced by mapping, scientific theories and mathematic algorithms.
‘ I see my practice as a series of quasi-scientific investigations contrasting installation and paper based work.’
Amy Sterly
Amy Sterly – Llanfaircaereinion – Powys – 2018.
Amy Sterly is a printmaker and sculptor originally from Chicago, now living in a small community in Wales . She tries to subvert the idea of the rural idyll through her prints and her recent sculptures have reinvented the nature of the book into something tactile that triggers the memory and emotion.
It was also a very pleasant journey through the lovely rolling hills between Welshpool and Newtown, the true heartland of Wales.
Amy Sterly is originally from Chicago , USA, she graduated in Fine Art at Rockford College, Rockford, Illinois and moved to the U.K. in 1989.
She is a Print Maker and Sculptor, who has exhibited across Wales, Europe and America.
‘ I want my Art to trigger emotion and memory and change the object into something that you might not expect’.
‘Being involved in the Literary Atlas Wales project has been an exiting and inspiring journey that has helped me find a new direction for my work and it also helped me explore new connections and meanings between literature, art and the concept of mapping.
The interdisciplinary nature of the project forces one to think about the nature of fiction and its place in the real world and how it connects with the way we imagine the story we are reading.’
It was also a very pleasant journey for me to travel to the lovely rolling hills between Welshpool and Newtown the true heartland of Wales.
John Welson
John Welson is one of a small band of Surrealist Artists from Wales. He lives over looking the port of Fishguard. Born in 1953 he has had over 300 exhibitions since the 1970’s with artists from Dali to Hirst. Currently he is painting lyrical landscapes inspired by his native Wales. He is photographed here at his recent exhibition in the Senedd in Cardiff Bay.
Aimee Lax – Ceramic Artist
Aimee Lax studied for her MA in Ceramics and Glass at the Royal College of Art, she is photographed here with her exhibition ‘Radioactive Boglach’. It’s symbolism, purity, fragility/strength is a commentary on nature, was at the Mission Gallery in Swansea in January 2020. Aimee is based in the West Country.
Rest in Peace Dear Malcolm , Poet, Translator and Teacher!
Malcolm Parr was one of the original core members of a group of Artists and Writers etc who met at the Westbourne Hotel in Swansea every Tuesday evening without fail . We talked of art and poetry and putting Wales on the map of the World, exhibitions were organised in Prague and the Czech Republic, Bruges, and Swansea, but the last one was at the Queens Hall Gallery in Narberth. My last trip with Malcolm, Keith Bayliss and Jeff Towns, was to London, to celebrate the life of Alfred Janes at the Royal Institution, but first it was to Malcolm’s favourite seller bar for a glass of candle lit dry sherry. Many will remember his readings at the Dylan Thomas Centre, packed with his wit and humour. At his wake at the No Sign Bar, poems were read by some of his fellow poets, David Greenslade, David Woolley and David Thomas, January 2020.
Bernard Mitchell
Peter Wakelin – Refuge and Renewal – Royal West of England Academy
A day return on the train from Swansea to Temple Meads, was an excuse to visit for the first time The Royal West of England Academy (RWA) in Bristol, and what a treat it was. I could not help but photograph this elegant building, how galleries used to look, but with a modern twist.
I had travelled to see ‘Refuge and Renewal’, curated by Peter Wakelin. The most interesting exhibition I have seen this year and certainly my book of the year. Peter Wakelin has used his wealth of knowledge to share with us the neglected history of the refugee artists who where given shelter in Britain and in particular Wales, in the periods during and after the First and Second world War, and the Russian occupation of the Eastern European Countries.
Of special interest to me, Peter talked of a painting by Josef Herman, of his family home in Warsaw, soon after he had learned of their death. Josef, sat at his easel, mother washing the cloths, father cobbling and his grand father at prayer (Peter’s words) What struck me were the colours just brown, blue and white, such emotion, one of Josef’s finest pictures.
After Bristol, the exhibition went to MOMA Wales, in Machynlleth, however the gallery closed due to the tragic Corvid 19 virus epidemic, but all is not lost we have the book and Culture Colony, Wales made a film of Peter’s talk at the RWA, which you can see on their website
Bernard Mitchell January 2020.
Paul Peter Piech – Exhibition
Here is a small treat for those of you that missed one of the smallest but most important exhibitions that has been held at the National Library of Wales for a long time, The original Linocuts and prints and in some cases the relevant text by the artist Paul Peter Piech. Bravo NLW! And just before the terrible virus closed us all down.
Bernard Mitchell
Welsh and Romanian Surrealism at the Senedd, Cardiff Bay
You could say that it was a Surreal Event at the Sennedd in November 2019.
Artist John Welson from Fishguard in Pembrokeshire and George Ostafi, the Romanian Surrealist who sadly passed away before the exhibition. In the picture are John Welson, left, and the Welsh Surrealist poet David Greenslade, wrote a poem as a tribute to George, in the background Artist Ivor Davies.
Bernard Mitchell
Photography Season, National Museum of Wales, Cardiff – November 2019
Bronwen Colquhoun Senior Curator of Photography has not just achieved one exhibition, but has created three galleries full of photographs, sadly cut short by the arrival of Corvid 19. This must be a first for the National, things were looking good when we had one designated gallery to the photographers art.
Martin Parr in Wales, August Sander and Industrial Visions by Bern and Hilla Becher. We arrived in time to hear Bronwen Colquhoun’s talk on the Martin Parr in Wales.
Martin Parr is based in Bristol, but now travels to a holiday home in Tenby, just the place for a man who excels in beach photography. Two things were apparent, the miners in the pithead baths, have been a subject of photographers from the days of tin baths in the kitchen and the display of still life photographs of food, neglected to show the fine cuisine and local produce that make up the Principality today.
Industrial Visions, showed the dedicated vision of Bern and Hilla Becher to document the Winding Towers of the coal mines which were part of the every village in the South Wales Valleys. Each one of a slightly different construction, now saved for posterity, after the devastation of the demolition carried out a plan destroy the Coal Industry by Margaret Thatcher and her government.
Sadly time passes and we could not give justice to August Sander.
Bernard Mitchell
Ron McCormick – ‘How Green Was My Valley’
Newport Museum and Art Gallery. September 2019.
They were hanging the exhibition the day before it opened. So I took the opportunity to meet and Photograph Ron McCormick before the crowds made it impossible, and he kindly gave me the time in his busy schedule.
Ron McCormick was born in Liverpool, and first studied art at The Liverpool College of Art and The Royal Academy Schools, London, before switching to photography. After a long career in photography he came to the University of Wales College Newport as Senior Lecturer in Documentary Photography with the founder of the first degree course David Hurn, in 1966. I wish now that I had waited a year, because I started a general course in Photography at the Berkshire College of Art in Reading in 1965.
Bernard Mitchell 2020
Bonds of Attachment – Emyr Humphreys at 100
A Centenary Symposium to celebrate the birthday of Emyr Humphreys, was organised by Prof Kirsti Bohata, at Swansea University, on the 13th April 2019.
One of the greatest Welsh Writers. Emyr Humphreys was born in Prestatyn on the 15th of April 1919, this symposium was organised to honour his literary and cultural legacy. Here are some of the great and the good who were present.
Sadly Emyr Humphreys died on 30th of september 2020 aged 101. Novelist, Poet and Dramatist. He is photographed here at his home in Llanfair PG, circa 1998.
Llansteffan Literary Festival 2018
Introduced by Christine Kinsey, Bernard Mitchell gave a talk about his new book Pieces of a Jigsaw, published by Parthian Books at the Osi Gallery, Llansteffan on Friday 8th June 2018. The exhibition will be available throughout the festival and includes images of Osi Rhys Osmond, R.S.Thomas, John Petts, Kusha Petts, Raymond Garlick, Mererid Hopwood, Christine Kinsey, Peter Jones and Sylvia Griffiths-Jones.
Beth Allender
Richard Williams, Elysium Artist in residence, Swansea
I visited Richard in his studio in February 2018 tucked away in a refurbished ex-nightclub, behind a bright yellow front door. Rich was working hard on his forthcoming exhibition ‘Come get it while its cold’ which exhibited from February to April 2018. The beautifully colourful images have a dark undertone, concerned with the idea of humanity’s disconnection from and exploitation of the ecosystem, specifically with the current massive and increasing depletion of insect populations in Europe.
Further information can be found at: www.richardwilliamsartist.com or www.instagram.com/richardwilliamsisme
Beth Allender
Meeting Tracey Moberly, Sarah Hopkins and Martyn Ware
6th November 2015.
Today I met and photographed the collaborators of a project working title ‘Power’, namely Tracey Moberly, Sarah Hopkins and Martyn Ware. Enthusiastically they told me of the aim of the project and their family connections with the steel and coal industry, which got them fusing ideas in the first instance. Through exploring the five senses the project will bring together the talents of all the artists, exploring each other’s trades. So far they have been recording sounds, visuals and print-making to create an exhibition which will be ready to showcase next year.
Beth Allender