Wales Contemporary 2022 weaves its spell on London
By James Brewer
Sponsored by the Port of Milford Haven and by Valero Petroleum and private supporters, the annual international exhibition Wales Contemporary 2022 has rebuilt with a flourish after the hiatus of Covid lockdowns.
Having travelled from the Waterfront Gallery, Milford Haven, to gallery@oxo on the Thames South Bank riverside walkway for its London showing, the 2022 edition solidified its place in the top rank of art events, into which the contemporary contest wove itself from its first outing in 2019.
Weaving her way to the very top of the 2,000 entries (from 1,000 artists living in 42 countries) was Ainsley Hillard, who presented her beautiful tapestry Anemone, Blodyn y Gwynt (English and Welsh for wood anemone). She was awarded the first prize in the two-dimensional category – which was a rare achievement for a textile submission for major open competitions. “Ainsley Hillard’s work appealed to us straight away,” said the selectors. “The fact that her work is in tapestry, a medium that has been overlooked in art history, is significant.”
To go with that success, she won jointly the People’s Choice award, from a poll of visitors to the exhibition. Incorporating a photo of her daughter, Iris, the tapestry, 104cm x 131cm in cotton warp and weft, is from a series inspired by woodlands that she created for the National Trust in 2021.
Based in Llandeilo, Carmarthenshire, Ainsley uses both textile and non-textile materials and processes, tracing their relationship to the human experience. She is skilled in digital and traditional hand weaving, print, photography, and audio-visuals. Her works “strive to evoke the sensual, material, aesthetic, and emotional dimensions of place within interior spaces and natural environments.”
Ainsley has an impressive national and international CV. A scholarship enabled her to undertake postgraduate studies in Australia between 2001 and 2007, and her output has won awards in Italy, Belgium, Ukraine, Australia, South Korea, and China.
The joint People’s Choice winner was David Wood for his papier-mâché sculpted mobile Old Sweet Nothings showing a couple of seniors on a swing – a composition that one fellow artist described as “life-affirming.”
In the three-dimensional category in the exhibition, first prize went to Hamish Young for a small-scale sculpture – made from pencil leads: surely a novel choice for any broad-based exhibition. The selection panel awarded the prize for Nest and said: “It’s an intricate use of a material you wouldn’t normally imagine as part of a sculpture. The artist has used what is straight material, a piece of lead you’d find as part of a propelling pencil, from which he has managed to form what is in fact a nest. There’s a delicacy, a solidity, and a presence to it.”
In his practice, Hamish is concerned with ‘in between’ spaces, drawing on feelings associated with loss and abandonment from his childhood. He said that Nest “sits at the boundary of both sculpture and drawing, at once apart from and a part of each genre. Empty, it waits for an occupant to arrive or return, reflecting my experience as an adoptee.” Hamish is a Royal West of England Academician in 2021 and became a member of the Royal Society of Sculptors in 2022.
Developed by Milford Haven’s Waterfront Gallery with the support of the Welsh Government, Wales Contemporary/Cymru Gyfoes champions and rewards contemporary artists and their diverse practices. Prizes for two-dimensional works are sponsored by the Port of Milford Haven and for three-dimensional entries by refiner Valero Petroleum. Together with private sponsors, they presented prizes totalling £12,000.
The first and second iterations of Wales Contemporary invited work ‘inspired by Wales,’ but the 2022 exhibition expanded the horizon to entries in any subject, on painting, sculpture, drawing, print, ceramics, glass, textile, collage, mixed media, and more. Organisers said that this “brings together a dynamic selection showcasing exceptional, diverse, and original expressions of contemporary practice across the globe.”
The exhibition displayed 144 artworks by 117 artists selected by Rebecca Salter, president of the Royal Academy; Morfudd Bevan, curator of the National Collection, National Library of Wales; and curator and author Jill Piercy.
Tom Sawyer, chief executive of the Port of Milford Haven told visitors to the private view in London on November 30: “We are delighted to be supporting Wales Contemporary. The Waterfront Gallery is an important cultural asset for Milford Waterfront, and one we are proud to collaborate with.”
Mr Sawyer had special praise for Waterfront Gallery curator and director David Randell and project administrator Julie Randell who he said had “big hearts, and had done a huge amount to develop the cultural aspect of south west Wales.” He said of the region: “Some of our young people are in poverty, and good art creates an opportunity for young people to raise their hopes, and raise their aspirations’”
One of Mr Sawyer’s personal favourites in the new exhibition was a small bronze sculpture entitled Boatman, by figurative sculptor, painter and visual artist Stefan Kotsev, who was born in Sofia, Bulgaria. Close by was an earthenware and ceramic creation Dure, by Joshua Schoenman.
Second prize in the two-dimensional section went to London-based Ellie Yannas, for her oil painting Deadly Co-ordinates, Aleppo. Ellie, who was born in Istanbul and educated in Athens, said: “Syria is not front-page news anymore. The world’s attention moved on. But the destruction remains. The coordinates in this painting serve as a reminder. The cityscape is viewed through a grid of blue lines. Broken shutters? Or a ‘distancing device?”
Edit Toaso secured the two-dimensional third prize for her painting Yellow Orchids. Now based in the UK, she completed her master’s in fine arts at the Hungarian Academy of Fine Arts, Budapest, and the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in The Hague.
Fourth prize in this category went to Adam de Ville for his splendidly titled painting Barmouth, ’85, Matching Cardigans, Sausage Rolls. He summed up its content: “At the mouth of the Afon Mawddach [a river in Gwynedd] is where my heart lies, mountains, sea, harbour, and all the Welsh weather! The start of a wonderful adventure from childhood into adulthood, and the maker of treasured memories.”
Fifth prize here was awarded to London-based Elaine Brown for her oil painting Yellow Clouds. “My experience of the relationship of people to things and their particular locations, far away and close to home, continues to inform my research, broadly, the pursuit of Spirit of Place.”
Another London-based artist, Vivian Ge, received the three-dimensional second prize for her textile Garden Vase ll. She explained: “Inspired by gardens, The Garden Vase collection preserves the tranquillity, abundance, florescence, and beauty of gardens via textiles. Natural material qualities and geometric forms are interwoven in the work, which evokes a joy of life and a tenderness of healing.” She is “focused on the positive role textiles, interiors, furniture, home décor, and digital space play in our mental health and well-being.” Drawing on the philosophy of “dwelling poetically on the earth,” her creative use of colours, textures, and forms “evokes a joy of life and tenderness of healing.”
Zoom Meeting, a hand-painted ceramic plate, earned Gail Altschuler the three-dimensional third prize. Gail, who studied in Amsterdam and moved to the UK in 1989 “uses clay as canvas.” In a series of Zoom porcelains, she documents the changed way people met and connected during the Covid pandemic.
Esther Neslen won the three-dimensional fourth prize for her sculpture Dependent Forms 12. Esther creates abstract ceramic forms, exploring interdependencies in human relationships. Organic texture and form “add a tactile dimension to a sense of precariousness.” The three-dimensional fifth prize went to Sara Dodd for her ceramic Monochrome Maquette. Sara sees beauty in the fragility and delicacy of porcelain while acknowledging its strength. Using liquid clay slip, she creates wafer-thin pieces of ceramic which are built up to form sculptures and wall-based installations.
The indefatigable, multi-disciplinary Sumi Perera presented a water-colour – water with a difference. It incorporates water that was ‘harvested’ from melting Greenland icebergs into plastic bottles. For the title, Sumi deploys six languages: English, French, German, Chinese, Russian and Sinhalese. This adds up to Poly-Mer – Plastique Mer – Plastik im Meer – 塑料海- пластиковое море – ප්ලාස්ටික් මුහුද
In December 2018, Scandinavian artist Olafur Eliasson organised as part of an artwork that 24 melting iceberg blocks be placed in front of Tate Modern gallery in London, and other blocks were transported to the outside of Bloomberg’s European headquarters. Sumi recorded the noise of the crackling bubbles as the ice dissolved, for inclusion in a sound installation.
The title she uses is a play on the words Polymer and Plastic-Sea in the various languages, reminding us that an international effort is essential to prevent irreversible harm to marine life. As the iceberg melts, “it looks as though Mother Earth is weeping,” said Sumi. She recalled that plastic pollution of the seas was documented in 1970, but not until December 2017 was a “zero vision” adopted by the UN Environment Assembly, which in its session took the theme “Towards a Pollution Free Planet” aimed at stopping the discharge of plastic into the sea.
Among her many current accolades, Sumi – who resides near London – has been shortlisted for the 2023 Dentons Art Prize, a prestigious award sponsored by leading law firm Dentons.
Sarah Carvell who works from her studio in Denbigh, submitted to Wales Contemporary the evocative Hometown. She says: “I paint from my day-to-day life living in a North Wales town.”
The Nigerian artist Titus Agbara who often paints with palette knife presented Earth Song inoil, charcoal, and graphite on canvas. This is an affecting self-portrait of the artist and his daughter: “The bond, the affection, the responsibility, and the future. The lyrics of Earth Song by Michael Jackson clouds my mind and inspired me through the process of the painting which I deem as a retrospective thought for everyone, the family, the home, the nation, and the world.”
Pembrokeshire-based Tim Arthur chose an unusual angle to depict a liquefied natural gas tanker in port. His acrylic is entitled Under the Jetty. Milford Haven is familiar with LNG carriers – the port handles 200 of them a year. Tim’s profile on the gallery website says that he, “with his paintings has developed an eye for the off-beat and quirky locations in Pembrokeshire in particular the boat-yards and estuary creeks neglected by holiday guidebooks.”
September Sunlight on Frenni Fawr (a Pembrokeshire mountain redolent of fairies and folklore) is pictured in oil on paper by John Cahill. “I can often be found when walking out and about in the rural landscape of the Cych Valley, North Pembrokeshire where I live. Although I’m using nature and the world around me as my subject, I don’t feel the need to stick to reality and therefore in the studio it’s the world within the picture that counts.”
The volunteer-run Waterfront Gallery, founded in 2003, was converted from the Old Sail Loft at Milford Docks. The 3,000 sq ft premises showcases the work of some 50 local artists and craft workers with six changing exhibitions throughout the year. The gallery is a registered charity and not-for-profit company.
Wales Contemporary was at the Waterfront Gallery from October 1, 2022, until November 12 before touring to London.
“We are delighted that this important competition was recognised in so many countries around the world,” said David Randell. “Bringing an exhibition of this quality to the far western fringes of Wales to share with our communities is an important part of our ethos.”
Wales Contemporary/Cymru Gyfoes is at gallery@OXO, London, until Sunday 4 December 2022. Social media #WalesContemporary.
