Notes from Wales Issue 1: Autumn 2014 | Page 9
What’s on this autumn
September is a big month in the north
Wales art calendar
As part of Helfa Gelf / Art Trail, 300 artists
open up their studios every weekend during
the month (similarly, there’s the Anglesey Arts
Week, which takes place in April).
I try to get to as many studios as possible in
September, to meet people and have a good
nose around their spaces. Helfa Gelf also
organises exhibitions throughout the year
for members such as the Caffi Celf shows at
Mostyn. This year will once again see an empty
building in the centre of Llandudno (46 Augusta
Street) turned over to Helfa Gelf artists for
a pop-up exhibition. Axisweb members Wendy
Leah Dawson and Angela Davies are both taking
part in the ‘Haus of Helfa’.
Like me, Angela Davies has experienced the
isolation of working as an artist and found
Helfa Gelf to be a gateway to connect with
other artists in north Wales. In 2012 she
began occupying empty market spaces as
studio space and organised ‘A Sense of Place’
exhibition in the People’s Market, Wrexham.
Her goal was ‘to connect with artists to
forge a creative community’ and she feels
that ‘Wrexham seems to be a more vibrant
place in terms of the arts these days.’ Angela
is also currently artist in residence at St.
Asaph Cathedral exploring the theme of
pilgrimage, which will inform the development of
a multi-media production in the Cathedral at
the end of the year.
Alana Tyson, Shades by the Seaside, 2014 ©Alana Tyson
Angela Davies, Zenobia, 2013, sculpture and film ©Angela Davies
‘Haus of Helfa’ is also a part of the Llawn02
festival which took place in September in
Llandudno. The free arts festival aims to
connect the history of the Victorian seaside
resort with contemporary art through the
theme ‘The Presence of Absence’.
The festival does a great job of straddling
the gap between appealing to the local
community and presenting interesting and
challenging contemporary art. I took part
with ‘Shades by the Seaside’, an intervention
involving silhouette portraiture.
North Wales environmental artist Tim Pugh
worked with local schools for LLawn02 to
clad one of the iconic Llandudno Promenade
shelters with coloured bottles.
The public were then invited to place their
own messages in the bottles throughout
the festival. The shelter was dismantled and
transformed into a recycled raft, which was
(symbolically) released out to sea with many
memories and messages contained within it.
There are also a couple of festivals taking
place in October: Bocs will be hosting a
festival called ‘Seven Traces’ which will involve
installations and performances throughout
Caernarfon and the blinc digital festival will be
held in Conwy at the end of the month.
NOTES FROM WALES | AUTUMN 2014 8