Wales Arts Review is very excited to announce our first Artists in Residence. Throughout 2017 these artists will take a leading creative role in what Wales Arts Review publishes, centring their skills on a challenging project over the course of a month. We were inundated with applications, receiving hundreds of emails about the positions, and it was no easy task whittling down all that talent to this final eleven. Our team of six editors debated long into the night, and in the end, we decided on a collection of people who we most want to work with, and whose work excites us. We think you will be excited by them too.
In choosing the eleven, we wanted a mixture of mediums, a way to showcase the diversity of artists working in and about Wales, and so we have writers, painters, musicians, but also many artists who have more than one string to their bow. One of the cornerstones of the Artist in Residence series will be collaboration, be it between artists or simply between artist and The Review. As you might be able to tell, we can’t wait to get going.
So here is the final eleven. Click on the names for more insight.
Sophie McKeand – Poet | Sophie is a writer of water and earth, of migration and roots. These threads of poetry are woven throughout Sophie’s life in celebration of the kaleidoscopic forces that make up the unnameable essence of being.
Rory Duckhouse – Artist, writer and photographer | Rory’s photographic work is concerned with how the photograph is perceived as a document and the role it plays as a record of an event over time. Using found and vernacular imagery, Rory appropriated images reveal how the layering of time has an effect on the veracity of the image.
Mandy Lane – Sculptor | Mandy Lane’s artistic practice is rooted in her identity and personal history as a woman living and working in one of the more deprived areas of Llanelli.
Leah Crossley – Photographer | A mother with an eye for photography. Leah visualises her journalistic entries that explore motherhood, pregnancy and her connection with her child.
Durre Shahwar – Writer | Durre is a writer, speaker, and PhD Researcher whose work explores the themes of identity, class, queerness, gender, and mental health.
Superhand – Electronic musicians and composers | A freak-blues music group based in Cardiff, South Wales.
Siân Norris – Writer & literary curator | Siân’s non-fiction has been published in the Guardian, the Independent, the New Statesman, 3 am magazine, Open Democracy and more.
Neale Howells – Painter | Artist Neale Howells born in Neath, South Wales studied at Bath Art College and graduated in 1990. His studio is based in Port Talbot where he often invites people in to discuss the work and raise questions about what contemporary art actually is.
Nicky Arscott – Artist, poet & comic book creator | Nicky was born in 1983 and lives and works near Machynlleth, Powys. You can view her poetry comics here. She runs the small comics publisher Mother Mary Press.
clare e. potter – Poet & writer | clare e. potter is a writer and performer from a South Wales mining village. She lived for ten years in the Deep South where she studied an MA in Afro-Caribbean literature and taught in a progressive school in New Orleans.
David Roche – Composer | David John Roche has composed pieces for vacuum cleaners and orchestra, epic planetarium shows, customised Dutch street organs, rock bands, video games, films, theatre shows, international orchestras, and anything beyond and in between.
Illustration by Dean Lewis
