Welsh Group launches series of exhibitions to bring work from artists across south and west Wales to a wider audience

The Welsh group begins a series of exhibitions next month called “8 Shows,” a year-long project which brings the group to a wider audience and provides a snapshot, mid-decade, of the work being produced in artist studios across south and west Wales.

‘About Time’, the first show, opens on March 2nd and brings together artists who make work about time explicitly, or who explore variations on a theme or subject over time, often over many decades.

Curator of the exhibition, Paul Edwards, says “There are particular transient subjects that are associated with time – light, weather, growth and decay – the things that are fragile and transient. These things are commonplace and observable and can be easily recorded with time-based media, but static images require different strategies.”

Paul Edwards’ self-portraits, which date from 1978 to 2023, trace changes across a lifetime of working in the studio, ‘a mirror to the world’. Dilys Jackson makes structures that take as subject objects – pollens – that have existed over millennia, in a world before art, before humans.

Pip Woolf makes work that explores our place on the planet focussing on a combination of practical, physical, emotional, political and philosophical questions.

Jennifer Allan makes work that is introspective and seeks to make sense of the self.

Philip Watkins paints images of the urban environment, looking at ‘in between places’ the kind of place you move through on the way to somewhere else.

“About Time” can be seen at Queens Street Gallery, Neath, from 2 March through 30 March.

Edwards said that a single image contains time – the time it took to make the image, sometimes minutes, sometimes hours, sometimes days, and this can be the subject.

“There are particular transient subjects that are associated with time – light, weather, growth and decay – the things that are fragile and transient,” Edwards said. “These things are commonplace and observable and can be easily recorded with time-based media, but painting requires different strategies.

“For instance, many people will be familiar with Monet using repetition in order to observe the light and the weather, making thirty images of Rouen Cathedral between 1892 and 1894, Edwards said. “The five artists in ‘About Time’ have found their own strategies,” he said.

Collaboration

‘Welsh Group: 8 Shows’ runs through to April 2025 and takes place in eight spaces across South and West Wales in collaboration with Queens Street Gallery Neath; Studio Cennen in Ffairfach, Llandeilo; and Oriel Canvas, West Wharf Gallery, Bay Art, all in Cardiff.

Each exhibition has a different focus: from how we represent time in the Neath show, to ‘Where we are now,’ – the second show, opening 23 March at Cardiff’s Oriel Canvas – which looks at the way the pandemic has changed how we understand our own mortality.

Other shows explore the spirit of place – how a subject is often beyond the surface of things; and making work about memory. These exhibitions focus on work that relates to interior architectural spaces, but also out of the gallery and in an environment where objects are in a dialogue with nature.

The exhibition ends with that idea, a show taking place in April 2025 on woodland in Ceredigion. These exhibitions and projects also bring together artists who work in diverse ways and come together as the Welsh Group, a collective that began in1948 and continues to contribute to the visual arts in Wales.

Edwards said that his own involvement with the group started in 1975 when he was a student.

One of his paintings was included in ‘Beth Newydd’ a Welsh Group exhibition at the National Museum. “It made me think that perhaps the idea of being an artist was not completely ridiculous!” the Swansea-born artist recalled.

‘8 Shows’ Exhibition Schedule and Participating Artists

‘About Time’
Queens Street Gallery, Neath. 2 March – 30 March. 2024

Paul Edwards
Jennifer Allan
Philip Watkins
Pip Woolf
Dilys Jackson

‘Where are we now’
Oriel Canfas Cardiff. 23 March – 13 April. 2024

Jacqueline Alkema
Jacqueline Jones
Kay Keogh
Karin Mear
Jess Woodrow

‘Genius Loci’
Oriel Canfas Cardiff. 2 July – 20 July. 2024

Chris Griffin
Veronica Gibson
Angela Kingston
Sue Roberts
Chris Evans

‘Seen and Unseen’
Bay Art, Cardiff. Autumn 2024

Maggie James
Gerda Roper
Phil Nicol
Mary Husted
Glenys Cour
Heather Eastes

‘Making Space Shaping Space’
West Wharf Gallery, Cardiff. 6 November – 30 December. 2024

Robert Harding
Shirley Anne Owen
Ken Dukes

‘Witness’
Online Project, December 2024

Paul Brewer
Dilys Jackson
Paul Edwards

‘Unexpected’
Studio Cennen, Ffair-fach, Llandeilo. 20 March – 26 April. 2025

Gus Payne
Anthony Evans
Thomasin Toohie
Lynne Bebb
Lorna Edmonton
Alan Salisbury

‘In the Landscape’
Llandysul, Ceredigion. 4 April – 9 May. 2025

Wendy Earle
Sue Hilley Harris

For more information, visit the Welsh Group website.