Galleries - October 2018

12 GALLERIES OCTOBER 2018 The Arts Council of Wales confirms on its website “that the creative industries have been identified as a key driver of business and growth” – an empowering message as Wales warms up for the autumn and winter art season. Setting the tone is T ŷ Pawb in Wrexham (the People’s House) which opened last month as an innovative centre for visual art. The local authority has turned a failing market hall and multi-storey car park into an exciting place for traders’ stalls, exhibitions and events. This integration of art into daily life is a long way from the distancing portico of most public galleries. The Guardian’s architecture reviewer called it “welcoming, animated, open, unpretentious and multifarious”. Another refurbishment, eagerly anticipated in the New Year, is Brecon Museum, reopening to combine museum, art gallery, library, café and community facilities. Its superb collection related to the county includes David Jones, Eric Ravilious, John Piper and Josef Herman. Meanwhile further autumn highlights are the sculptural objects by Andrew Logan (he of the alternative Miss World) at Aberystwyth Arts Centre, as well as illustrations and designs by the late Susan Williams-Ellis, founder of Portmeirion Pottery, at Oriel Brondanw, tucked away in the glorious home of her architect father, who created Portmeirion itself. Peter Wakelin the albany gallery There can be little that sings Wales more than a breathtaking mountain scene and Rob Piercy is clearly a master at calling up the drama and the power of a mountain landscape. Of the work that is showing at The Albany Gallery this month, most of the large works were painted from a height and during the stark winter months. Also in the show as a complete contrast are Piercy’s ‘lighter’ works depicting buildings and mature trees. iap fine art While searching for the right building to buy in Monmouth to house a new gallery, IAP Fine Art is putting on a pop-up exhibition this month in the grade one listed Monmouth Shire Hall. The show highlights recent paintings, drawings and prints by Chris Gollon and Maggi Hambling, alongside signed prints by David Hockney, Peter Blake, Terry Frost, Victor Pasmore, Ben Nicholson, Paula Rego, Graham Sutherland and Howard Hodgkin. There are also some previously unseen works by Chris Gollon, the last that he painted, including a portrait of Francis Bacon from a chance encounter with Bacon in the 1980s, when he reputedly saved Bacon’s life. cardiff made gallery Zena Blackwell, whose work features as a first solo show this month at Cardiff Made, is all about the mother and child scenario, but not in a conventional sense. Striking paintings in oil and acrylic, using intense colour and flat tones, they are not figurative compositions but rather snapshots of childhood “addressing not only the less than potential cuteness of childhood, inverting and investing it with potential malevolence” states Cardiff Made’s Zoe Gingwell. Both artist and gallerist will be ‘in conversation’ as part of a day long symposium ‘Maternal Attitudes’ on 17 November at the gallery. rt Wales