Women artists from across Wales to feature in major exhibition

A south Wales gallery is set to host a major anniversary exhibition celebrating a decade of work by a collective of women artists from across Wales.

Concentric was set up in 2015 and produces work based on “strong, thought-provoking ideas”. Curator Jacqueline Alkema in particular is inspired by iconic women’s portraiture.

A contemporary art gallery and cafe in Jacobs Antiques Market, West Wharf began as and is named after the harbour from which the market is the only surviving structure.

Gallery Director Elizabeth Cooling explained: “The name West Wharf Gallery resonates with history; it stands as a testament to Cardiff’s evolution from a bustling harbor to a cultural hub.”

The gallery contains a range of Welsh and global artists and photographers, fitting for the diverse showing promised in the Concentric Anniversary Exhibition.

Across painting, sculpture, photography and performance art, the event will bring together artists exploring everything from Welsh industrial landscapes to childhood memory and African diaspora spirituality.

Participating artists include:

Penny Hallas

Whatever the media used, Penny Hallas’s work revolves around a fascination with internal states of being: alive to the promptings of chance, fantasy and emotion, it seeks out correspondences between the material world and the hidden crannies of the psyche. Based in the Black Mountains, Powys she is interested in the way different systems – agricultural, industrial, ecological, artistic – come into being, collide, become enmeshed and fall apart under pressure of natural, psychological or more socially determined forces. 

A core theme is the complex nature of our perception and experience of place. One aspect of her practice includes imaginative responses to past and current industrial activity in settings typically seen as representing a rural idyll, such as Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty. Using but subverting traditional artistic techniques and formats, like the myriorama, along with home-made, idiosyncratic viewing devices, Penny examines the mechanisms by which we attempt to make sense of our environment and to situate ourselves within it, combining and intermingling narratives as a way of extending conversations about value, in historical terms and in future action.

Jacqueline Alkema

Influenced by Dutch and Flemish painting Jacqueline has a long-term interest in iconic women’s portraiture. Inspiration comes from reading, research and images from her own reference material.  Her paintings develop through intuition and experimentation, ultimately producing complex emotional portraits.Mostly working in oils, she also uses pastel and mixed media.

​Jacqueline is a member of The Welsh Group, Contemporary Art Society Wales and a long-standing member of the Women’s Arts Association of Wales, She is also the curator of Concentric, set up in 2015

Patricia Ziad 

These images were made in the darkroom using the chemigram process. They are handmade on very fine, vintage, silver gelatin paper. The image is formed through the interaction of physics (the resist) and chemistry (the development).Each image is unique

Adeola Dewis 

Adéọlá is a Trinbagonian artist and carnival scholar living and working in Wales. Her work engages discourse around identity, diaspora, transformation and ritual through drawing, painting, performance art, spoken word and writing. The artwork selected for this exhibition looks at an embodiment of river nature energy (Osun), rooted in African diaspora spirituality.

Rebecca Jayne Hammett, TEMMAH

My primary practice has focused on body. Since 2014 this evolved into the form of sculpture/apparatus. Creating a developing interplay of control between the sculpture/apparatus and myself.

A personal and intimate reflection on shame. Survival mechanisms borrowed from natural environment. In the development of body sculpture/apparatus and spoken word. The simple and ancient materials of thorn and copper married as a barrier bridging the gap of science and folklore. Unapologetically confessional facing past trauma through art and performative action directly unraveling shame in public space.

Kay Keogh

Fear narrows our world. Trust shrinks, and we turn inward, protecting what feels safe and certain. The wider world becomes something to watch, rather than embrace.

Both are natural. Both are human. We are always suspended between them, between reaching out and retreating in. What matters is not the fear itself, but how we answer it. Whether we let it divide us, or use it as a reason to draw closer.

Because even in uncertainty, there is a choice, to stand apart, or to stand together.

One instinct pulls us together, seeking comfort, strength, the simple relief of not facing it alone. The other pulls us apart tightening trust, shrinking our world, turning inward to protect what feels safe.

Both are human. Both are real. And we live in that tension.

Fear doesn’t decide what happens next.

We do.

Elinor Staniforth 

‘Stolen Scenes’ (or ‘Cipolygon Cudd’ in Welsh) is on ongoing series of work made in response to old photographs I have taken, collected and kept in an archive over the last ten years. These images are my response to trying to understand the journey of moving on whilst also being drawn to the same stories, places, and people time and time and again. The images connect the themes of childhood, feeling separate, the pull to remain and the desire to journey elsewhere.