‘MEWNrhwng’ is a multidisciplinary exhibition that presses on the notion of transition, the departures, and the crossing over of a physical, metaphorical and psychological state. It is the in-between moments of here or there, now or then, them or us, reflecting on the surroundings and connections of place, longing, grief and boundaries.
As a collaboration between four female artists Gemma Lowe (painter, based in Chester), Najia Bagi (musician/performer, based in Oxford), Jenny Cashmore (multidisciplinary artist, based on the English/Welsh border) and Rebecca F. Hardy (sculpture, installation, based in Bethesda), the exhibition will tour to various art spaces around Wales. Each artist’s work has similar undertones but diverse approaches to narratives and storytelling.
‘MEWNrhwng’ is an open-ended and organic collaboration that will transcend and grow over the period of the project between painting, playful installations, careful and thought out placements of sculptures and projections to live performance and participatory recordings and site-specific movements. This project will allow the artists to explore and test new boundaries within their practices and collaborate with each other and the wider community.
Working in the current climate of binary states (Brexit, Climate change, fake news and statuses on social media) to allow space for the in-between. It will address issues of belonging, transition, grief, boundaries, language, and cultural identity and provide opportunities for raising awareness and discussion in contemporary topics.
The experience will allow us to learn from each other's practices, make new work that crosses disciplinary boundaries, and develop new networks. Broadening these questions to the wider community both within the creative sphere and the general public.
The collaboration will be recorded through this blog and via the projects instagram account @mewnrhwng. The project has also successfully accepted a small production grant from the Art Council of Wales and the support of Oriel CARN, Caernarfon and Elysium Gallery, Swansea.
Gemma Lowe
Gemma Lowe (b. Manchester, U.K) studied MA Painting at Royal College of Art (2012-14) and BA (Hons) Fine Art at Sheffield Hallam University (2002-5). She held her first solo show, Throwing Shapes at 84 Hatton Garden, London in 2015. In 2016, Gemma joined a group residency in Evia, Greece. The opportunity to develop her work and test ideas led to a group show entitled Duplicit at SNEHTA in Athens. Later in 2016, Gemma was invited to perform her work Without Roof or Rule publicly during the Art Licks Weekend, as part of Working from Home, AMP Gallery and most recently she held her second Solo exhibition, Small Talk, with Coleman Projects in London.
She exhibits and works on a range of collaborative projects internationally and has presented her work in formal settings and for higher education audiences. Her practice and research is an exploration of the production of meaning that occurs in everyday language. There is rich potential in the misheard and the misread. The way in which these occurrences are echoed in the instinctual mark making of painting can be an opportunity to create dialogue.
Gemma Lowe - Kin, 2017
Najia Bagi
Najia Bagi is an artist who likes to explore the spaces within us: longing, waiting, transition, pause, breathing. She uses rituals, gatherings, repetition and movement to connect herself and others to these spaces. Some of Najia's projects are participatory, which means that others join her to share their stories, and these shared moments provide comfort and the creative material which often forms a performance or installation. Najia completed an MA in Creative Practice at Goldsmiths College in 2018 where she gained a Distinction.
Najia has led projects across the UK and internationally, including a recent multi sensory installation at Modern Art Oxford as part of the University of Oxford's EMPRES performance evening. Najia also curates events, having recently brought together three women with Middle Eastern cultural heritage to explore how the in-between states of cultural identity can uniquely be explored through embodied movement.
Najia Bagi - Porth Galar Live Performance in collaboration with Rebecca F. Hardy (I’r Mor, CASTELL03 2018)
Jenny Cashmore
Jenny Cashmore is a contemporary, multi-disciplinary artist whose work manifests in various forms. This includes across and in-between, performance, actions, lens based mediums, and interventions. Her works and projects are often specific to context or site.
She is interested in exploring our sense of place and relationship to place. Exploring existing structures and paradigms relating to the construction of communities, our use of space, and way of life. She enjoys playing with and manipulating aspects of everyday life. She is interested in both animate and inanimate relationships within these contexts.
Cashmore’s past work and projects include Colours of Stoke produced by Appetite Stoke as part of the Big Feast (Stoke on Trent, 2019), a collaborative Earth Walk with Celia Johnson (Sidney Nolan Trust, Presteigne, Wales, 2018), Descent, performed in the Finnish Museum of Natural History (Helsinki, Finland, 2017), and Colours of Llandudno, produced by Culture Action Llandudno, as part of Llawn05 (Llandudno, Wales, 2017).
Past residencies include; East Bristol Contemporary (Online. 2018), UNIT(e), g39 (2016) and Summer Camp, National Theatre Wales, UK (2015).
Jenny Cashmore - Descent, live performance (Finnish Museum of Natural History 2017)
Rebecca F. Hardy
Rebecca’s current practice moves seamlessly between collage, sculpture, installations to photography. Relatively the artwork relates to the conduct of human nature, its behaviour to perform consciously and subconsciously and the complexity of emotions upon the individual and within society. It is the prolonged fascination with cataloguing artifacts, continuation of repetitive movements, the subtlety of objects and exploration of biology, psychology and visual exploration of human anatomy, domestic objects and every so often her own fluttering state of mind.
Her new body of work reflects and dictates on the current transparent mentality, readdressing our expectations and views on mental health and social stereotyping. Her sculptures and installations act as vessels and metaphors and co-exist with the repetitive motion and the space it temporarily consists in.
Rebecca has worked in collaboration with artists and educators on several creative projects across Wales, working within gallery, community engagement and educational settings. From Lead Creative School Projects to Ideas.People.Places to her own art practice Haus of Helfa Residency (2015), mom.mam.mum project ran by Culture Action Llandudno (2018), LLAWN07 (2019).
Rebecca F. Hardy - Afiach (Balaclafa Gallery, 2018)
