The low-down
Ffotogallery, Cardiff >
----------------------------------Mostyn, Llandudno >
----------------------------------Oriel Davies, Newtown >
----------------------------------Mission Gallery, Swansea >
----------------------------------Freddy Griffiths, from
Illustrated Regional Guides to
Scotland and Wales, 2014
The Arts Council of Wales’s
Inspire strategy >
----------------------------------WARP (Wales Artist Resource Programmme) >
----------------------------------PrawN >
----------------------------------Eistedffod >
-----------------------------------
Axisweb members
Freddy Griffths >
Shaun James >
Phil Lambert >
Ian Wilkins >
Supporting early career artists demands some
brave new thinking. Creating a new ‘Early Career’
membership at Axisweb was part of recognising the
benefit of an Axisweb profile to artists in the final
year of university or just graduating, and making it
really affordable (just £15 a year) was critical.
There are now two artist resource programmes in
Wales, which early career artists can make use of –
g39’s long established programme WARP and the just
starting up PrawN in Wrexham, initiated by Jemma
Bailey and James Harper.
Artists are at the centre of both programmes,
each of which offers mentoring and advice and
opens up critical exchange between artists,
emerging and established. Artists work hard enough
to make their work and get it seen – giving them
just a little leg up at the start goes a long way.
On a closing note, a big congrats to Sean
Edwards for winning the Gold Medal for Fine Art
at the Eistedffod this year with his film Maelfa.
Sean, who runs WARP, has been active for years
working to support artists in Wales by developing
a creative range of artist professional
development programming. He is definitely outside
his box in his extraordinarily creative and rich
artistic practice and this carries over into his
work at WARP.
He’s also a great example of how our home-grown
networks of support can nurture and develop an
artist’s career – he was a recipient of a 2010–11
Creative Wales Award and has shown widely in Wales
as well as throughout the UK and internationally.
I reckon we’ll be seeing him in Venice in the not
too distant future.
Alicia Miller, August 2014
NOTES FROM WALES | AUTUMN 2014 32