Wales Feed

Virtual Reality: could it change the way we watch the Six Nations?

2016-02-26T13:43:05+00:00

Virtual reality puts the viewer at the centre of the action allowing them to look around and choose what they look at. It gives a much more immersive experience than traditional television or computer games. At ��̳ Wales, we are experimenting with what it could mean for our coverage of events. And there aren't many bigger events in Wales than the RBS Six Nations.

Expanded 360 view of the anthems at the start of the Wales v Scotland match 2016

Working with the WRU, Visit Wales and Cardiff based VR specialists, Atticus Digital, we filmed a selection of virtual reality video clips at the recent Wales v Scotland Six Nations match. Have a look at one of the clips on the ��̳ Wales Facebook page.

Together these clips give you a flavour of what it is like to be standing pitch-side at the Principality Stadium with 74,000 fans cheering as the teams come out onto the pitch and sing the anthems.

These clips are most exciting when viewed using a Virtual Reality headset, but you can still get a taste of the potential of this technology by watching the videos on your smartphone. Search for ��̳ Wales on your Facebook app or visit the ��̳ channel on the YouTube App. Move your phone and look around to get a feel for the scale of the venue and the emotional intensity of the crowd’s reaction.

This fledgling technology has its challenges. When we used it to film the Cardiff Half Marathon back in October, it was the technology that challenged us: could the camera actually film for long enough and how do we stream such large video files to the audience? Now the challenges are more creative/logistical: with such a high profile event how do we capture the quality of experience that the audience expects without getting in the way of the TV cameras, players and pyrotechnics?

Taking VR pictures with the helmet-mounted VR camera

Wales’ Six Nations home games are filmed with 29 cameras, to achieve the very best TV coverage. You might think that adding a few more 360 cameras would be simple, but, even with fantastic cooperation from the Stadium and our TV team, it was hard to position cameras where they wouldn't obscure the view of match cameras. One novel solution is the use of a head mounted camera – easier to move than a tripod.

We hope you enjoy this first trial of capturing the excitement of international rugby, but clearly the next step is to look at how Virtual Reality could be used to capture match action. In a few years, I think we will see live coverage, and immersive experiences that take you onto the pitch during the game, putting rugby fans right at the centre of the action.

Can you help with these lost snapshots of Valley Life?

2014-08-08T08:20:59+00:00

A ��̳ Cymru Wales film about the chance discovery of 18,000 unpublished photographic negatives depicting life in the Valleys during the 1960s and 70s is currently in production and needs your help.

I have been photographing the Rhondda Fawr for several years, because I love the changing topography, the architecture, and most of all, the people!

Can you help identify the people or place in this 'Gambo' derby?

This work led to me being asked to do a project celebrating the communities of Cwmparc and Treorchy, two very different but closely-knit villages at the top of Rhondda Fawr. While Cwmparc is now sleepy and idyllically placed at the foot of the Bwlch mountain, Treorchy is a thriving and vibrant shopping stop-off.

Treorchy stands out because it has retained many attributes now sadly missing from other Valley towns - Bute Street is a vibrant shopping centre; It has a fantastic theatre, the Park and Dare; and it also has a brilliant library.

Can you remember when elephants came to Merthyr high street?

Researching my new project in that library led to one of those life-diverting moments that come along every so often. I was allowed into a storeroom behind the reference section, and directed to eight anonymous cardboard boxes.

Opening the first one was like releasing the genie from the bottle - tens of little yellow Kodak boxes from the 1960s were in there. Tentatively I opened the first one that came to hand, and I genuinely couldn't believe my eyes when I saw that the first packet of negatives was labelled 'Enoch Powell visits Merthyr' in a clear hand, written in old-fashioned fountain pen.

Are these Freddie and the Dreamers' Freddie Garrity and Bernie Dwyer playing football?

To my amazement, they were ALL full of old photographs and negatives, and as I looked more closely I realised I had discovered the most incredible archive of life in the Valleys. I was told they had been donated to the library by a local family after the owner died, and after more digging I learnt that this amazing collection was the work of Rhondda-based photographer, David Thickins.

The boxes contained about 18,000 negatives and a handful of black and white photographs. There were pictures of ordinary people going about their everyday lives, as well as celebrity visits to the area, political rallies, circus shows and even - bizarrely - car crashes.

Superstar singer Petula Clark - but where is she?

The photographs dated from the 1960s and 70s; they were beautiful and haunting and provided a unique record of a lost era. I decided to find out more about the people featured in some of the photographs and began to visit some of the places I was able to identify.

I now need to widen my search, and hope that this blog can help. A small selection of the pictures are featured here - do you know any of the people in them? Can you tell me where they were taken? Maybe you have elderly relatives who lived in the area or who may have been at one of the events?

Here I am just showing a handful of pictures, but there are hundreds more. Please get in touch if you think you can give me any information about them.

Discover more pictures on ��̳ Wales' Facebook album.

Andrew Morris: What’s Left Behind

2014-03-24T13:02:42+00:00

A poignant exhibition of photographs by the inaugural winner of the Wales International Young Artist Award has just gone on display at Chapter Arts Centre in Cardiff.

Andrew Morris from Swansea scooped the accolade from the British Council Wales for a body of work created during his time as a student at University of Wales Trinity Saint David, Swansea, where he studied Photography in the Arts.

The pictures feature deserted domestic scenes where nothing at first seems amiss, and it is as if the owner has been called away or has just popped out.

However, when the viewer inspects a little more closely, something jars - wallpaper is peeling or one photo frame remains inexplicably abandoned on an otherwise empty bookshelf.

These homes are, in fact, properties of the deceased which are in the process of being cleared out by relatives - an intimate glimpse into a world that has just been turned upside down by death.

Andrew told me that he was drawn to capture these scenes after working on a project throughout his university years that dealt with presence and absence and what gives objects sentimental value.

An image from the What Is Left Behind exhibition by Andrew Morris in 6x7 medium format.

“I started photographing homes that were in the process of being repossessed and was struck by the items that were left behind, as if somebody had just popped out, and I wanted to develop that idea.

“The project progressed until I was photographing homes that were due to be put up for sale after the owner had passed away and I always had this really strange feeling when I stepped inside.

“I never knew what was behind each door and what it would reveal to me about the person who lived there.

"Some of the rooms seemed as if the owner was just about to appear, with reading glasses left on a window sill, indentations in a chair or beds that appeared freshly made whereas others were completely bare.

“It really made me think about ownership and family and what I would want to hold on to if I was in that situation.”

The sense the viewer gets from the photos is that the rooms are in a state of transition - somewhere between occupied and vacant.

An image from the What Is Left Behind exhibition by Andrew Morris.

The Wales International Young Artist Award was launched in 2013 by the British Council Wales with the aim of both identifying a new pool of young talent across the creative sectors and also nurturing it by offering young artists from Wales, national and international exposure.

As its first winner, Andrew received a £500 prize and the opportunity to exhibit in six continents and over 100 countries. He already has plans to take his work to Cairo through the British Council.

He said: “I’m trying to come to terms with being given the award because it doesn’t seem quite real.

“This is my first solo show and it is fantastic because it opens up my work to a whole new audience and I’ve already had a really interesting dialogue with some of the people who have come to see the exhibition.

Andrew's photographs will be on show in the bar at Chapter until Sunday 18 May 2014.

The Fantastic Mr. Fox

2013-11-18T13:07:25+00:00

Here's something you don't see everyday - a fox in water.

What makes this even more remarkable however is the fact that this fox is swimming in the sea - off the coast at Burry Port in south west Wales.

Fox having a swim off Burry Port by Darren Harries

Darren Harries captured these amazing images and submitted them to our ��̳ Wales Nature Flickr group.

Fox swimming at Burry Port by Darren Harries

Foxes can swim, but will normally only take to the water when strictly necessary - either to escape danger or to seek out food e.g. swimming across a lake to reach nesting ducks and eggs on an island.

Fox enjoying the seas off Burry Port by Darren Harries

It's a mystery why this particular animal was swimming but perhaps it's developed a taste for the local shellfish or was trying to reach a spot where wading birds were feeding on the shore.

In 2010 a fox cub was rescued from the sea off the Sussex coast after people on a boat spotted it as they came into the harbour and notified wildlife experts.

In Memory by Grainne Connolly

2013-02-11T17:29:01+00:00

For a recently graduated artist, that first public show is always going to be nerve-wracking - you are letting the public in to critique your work for the very first time.

But when the subject matter is that of your own grief at losing your father, it opens up a whole different swathe of emotion.

For Pembrokeshire-born Grainne Connolly, whose first exhibition is currently on at the Swansea Museum, her father's death in 2011 created a huge crossroads in her life.

Image © Grainne Connolly

Falling behind on her college work at Carmarthen College, she could either take time out to resit the year, or turn and face that elephant in the room which she was currently unable to tackle, her very raw sense of loss.

Bravely, she chose the latter path and at a time when all she wanted to do was shut off her emotions, she picked up her camera and ventured out into the Pembrokeshire countryside to re-connect with her father.

Image © Grainne Connolly

She told me: "I realised I had to go on and do my third year, but all I could really think about was my dad.

"It was really cathartic actually because until then I wasn't letting myself feel anything and I realised I hadn't really known him.

"He died on a beautiful day at the end of a hot spring in 2011 and during the winter that followed, I felt compelled to get to know him, as the man he was, not just as my parent."

Image © Grainne Connolly

What came next was an extraordinary voyage of self-discovery, which saw Grainne visit the places her father often frequented as a way of connecting with him.

He was a fan of ancient burial sites and historic places in Pembrokeshire and whereas in his lifetime she used to dread being dragged along on the excursions in the cold and wet to visit yet another meaningless location, this time her experience was quite different.

"When he died, he was buried in a churchyard next to where he lived and I felt nothing going there - his spirit wasn't there for me.

"Instead I could really imagine him in the places he used to visit. It became a very strong sensation and at times I felt I could smell him."

Image © Grainne Connolly

Wanting to convey this ethereal sense of presence in her photographs, Grainne began experimenting with her techniques.

She decided to use strips of material blowing in the wind to signify her father's presence and alighted on the idea of muslin as a material because it used to be used traditionally in funerals.

Image © Grainne Connolly

"We had quite a difficult relationship and I really wanted to show it was resolved and all was forgiven.

"This project really helped me see that he was just a person who made mistakes like everybody else- it was a very healing process."

Her photographs are printed using traditional techniques on medium format film and are then printed by hand on silver Gelatin papers.

Image © Grainne Connolly

"I love the process of the dark room and seeing the image come out on paper as you lift it out of the chemicals."

In Memory, a collection of photographs by Grainne Connolly is on show at the Swansea Museum's Long Gallery until 14 April.

For more details about the artist visit her website gk-connolly.co.uk.

New book showcases Cardiff Before Cardiff photography

2012-12-14T14:26:28+00:00

A new book tells the story of an intriguing discovery of photography of Cardiff from the late 1970s and early 1980s, which has ultimately led to the reuniting of a father and daughter.

If you live in the capital city you may have heard of Cardiff Before Cardiff. The project behind the book started as far back as 2010 and there was an exhibition at the Wales Millennium Centre earlier this year.

For those unfamiliar with it, in autumn 2010 Cardiff-based photographer Jon Pountney happened upon what he guessed to be "hundreds of prints and perhaps thousands of negatives" while he was renovating a building in the Heath area of Cardiff.

This body of documentary photography, taken largely in the Adamsdown, Splott and Butetown areas, was the work of Keith S Robertson. Unknown to Pountney at the time, he began to share the photos online to gain more information about them and the many anonymous faces in the striking images.

Inspired by the photos he'd found, Pountney also began taking his own images in the same communities – and of the same faces nearly 30 years on. You can see a photo gallery of now and then pictures on ��̳ Wales News online.

Now, a selection of pictures taken by both photographers has been chosen for the Cardiff Before Cardiff book, published by Y Lolfa, with author Alun Hibbard helping to narrate the stories behind the images. I spoke to both Pountney and Robertson earlier this week ahead of the book's release.

Jon Pountney and Keith S Robertson pore over their photographs

The last time I spoke to Pountney was at the time of the exhibition, which he called "a bit overwhelming". He said: "I wasn’t really prepared for so many people to turn out. I think the WMC said they had over 400 people in on the opening night. One guy had even organised a bus trip!"

The exhibition also gave him the chance to meet family members of some of the people in Robertson's original photographs.

He said: "In the book we mention one family called the Makinson family. Their family members are in the photo of the paint shop on Carlisle Street, so they were able to show their granddaughter the picture of her grandfather that she'd never seen before - both the people in the picture have passed away now, so that was really moving. Three generations were reunited through a photo."

Robertson told me that he'd "written off" all hope of seeing his work again, having been told that all of his work had been burnt when he was kicked out of his studio. He said: "What Jon has done was quite devastating at first, because I'd written it off and never expected to see it again."

Robertson was born in Splott. He said that wandering the streets of Cardiff and taking the photographs "was fun" and that he didn’t encounter any bad reactions or suspicion from anybody he met.

I asked Pountney how they had met for the first time. "One night I was leaving the studio and Keith was stood outside with his daughter Leigh, just about to knock on the door. I was thunderstruck, as at that point I’d never spoken to Keith.

"Keith came in, we had a chat and I showed him the blog. I was very nervous at that point, thinking 'I've no idea what Keith is going to say about what I've done with his work.’ All I’d done up to then was to put Keith's photos online, and very few of mine.

"The original meeting was an amazing stroke of luck."

Pountney describes the way the Cardiff Before Cardiff book came about as “another strange coincidence”. As a result of the blog he was contacted by the National Library in Aberystwyth, who were holding a talk on street photography in November 2011 as part of the Lens Festival.

Golwg, the Welsh language magazine, wanted to run a feature on the festival and so Pountney was contacted by writer Alun Gibbard.

"Alun rang me and we had a chat and got on really well. His grandparents lived on Carlisle Street, which was where Keith had lived. He really liked the idea but hadn't seen any of the pictures at that point.”

Once Gibbard had seen the photos he was so impressed that he ran a double page spread in the magazine and, already a published author himself, contacted his publishers Y Lolfa about the idea of a photo book.

I asked Pountney how he had selected the images for the book, out of the vast quantity he had to choose from.

"Due to time constraints, what I had digitised of mine and Keith's work was effectively what we had to choose from.

"The rule I'd set myself was that I'd only use stuff from Keith's prints, not negatives, because I only wanted to show Keith's photos how he had wanted to show them.

"The selection really was what went in the exhibition, but Keith asked to add a few - like the butcher with the pigs heads."

There are several 'exclusive' photos in the book that people won't have seen before though, as Pountney explained: "There are a few extra ones of mine taken last summer and there are several of Keith's which weren't in the exhibition and I don't think have been online. I thought it was prudent to put more in; I didn't want it to just look like a brochure of the exhibition."

One photo, of a baby in an incubator, sparked the reunion of Robertson with his daughter, Nicola.

Nicola and Jackie Horne. Nicola, the baby in the incubator, is Keith's daughter

Pountney said: "I saw that picture right at the start, and I thought if I can find who is in that incubator and take a picture of them now, that would be the most amazing turnaround.

"So I digitised the picture, put it online and had an email from somebody called Nicola Horne. It read something like, 'Hi Jon, love the pictures, lovely photo of the baby in the incubator. The funny thing is, that's me, and Keith is my dad.'"

Nicola had lost touch with her father, but through the project and other members of the family getting in touch, the two are now back in contact.

I asked Robertson how he felt about being reunited with his daughter. He said: "Overwhelmed. I find it very difficult to come to terms with it really."

Pountney added: "I probably wouldn’t believe this story unless I'd lived it. There are so many coincidences and so many amazing parts to it. I'm just so pleased that Keith has got everything back that he lost, which is what he deserves.

"I would love at some point to sit down with Keith and do something that is extensive, and probably just of Keith’s work. I think Keith really deserves exposure for the amazing pictures that he took and his work alone is certainly strong enough to have a book of its own."

I made the mistake of asking Robertson if he still dabbled in photography, to which I was playfully rebuked with "one doesn’t dabble in photography". Due to recovering from a stroke he's unable to take photographs at the moment but the two plan to work together in the future, with the idea of a possible documentary in the pipeline.

Pountney said: "I wouldn’t want to think the book would be the end of the story, I'd be really sad if it was. But I'll be happy to see the book in the flesh – to have a book come out for Christmas isn't something that happens every year."

Photo exhibition aims to dismiss Welsh stereotypes

2012-11-29T12:14:38+00:00

It was when snapper Dan Wood was travelling the world with a friend that he tired of his usual travel photography and decided his next project would be to focus on his home country.

Fed up with Welsh stereotypes and jokes that made digs at the nation he is so proud of, he set off with the aim of documenting the real Wales and what makes it unique in a series of candid shots.

Photo: Dan Wood

The result is a collection of 52 black and white hand printed photographs that explore cultural identity under the title What Is Welsh.

Currently being shown at the Cynon Valley Museum and Gallery in Aberdare until 5 January, the project is funded by the Arts Council of Wales.

Photo: Dan Wood

Dan, who works out of a studio at his home in Bridgend, said: "I was out in Morocco documenting all these different things and it suddenly hit me that I needed to find out what was going on in my own country.

"I decided my next project would be concerned with recording Welsh people in a positive way as I'd seen enough shots of council estates and men sitting around in string vests. We don't need anymore depictions of Wales as rural and insular when it is cosmopolitan and diverse.

"I wanted something more affirming and that moved away from clichés and daffodil shots."

Photo: Dan Wood

Last year Dan went on a long road trip of Wales with his English girlfriend, documenting the scenes as he saw them.

Many of the shots are environmental portraits or snapshots of people he met and spent time with along the way.

"It was the first time I had really appreciated the north-south divide in Wales," he said.

"It was really interesting delving deep into different people's worlds and their interest and I also tried to incorporate a lot of street photography into the collection as well which isn't an easy thing to do in your home country."

Photo: Dan Wood

Dan shot the photos exclusively with film and then developed them all during a seven-week toil in his darkroom.

He hopes to take the exhibition elsewhere when it has finished its run in Aberdare.

He added: "I want my photos to depict a Wales that is as multi-cultural and interesting as anywhere else on earth. To explore what it is that makes people Welsh is to explore what it is that makes people unique."

To find out more about Dan's work visit danwoodphoto.com.

Cardiff Before Cardiff exhibition

2012-04-04T11:30:54+00:00

A new photography exhibition born out of a chance discovery of intriguing archive documentary photos from the 1980s opens this week at the Wales Millennium Centre in Cardiff.

Cardiff-based photographer Jon Pountney is the man behind the Cardiff Before Cardiff exhibition, and the much longer-running project that inspired it.

While renovating Warwick Hall in Gabalfa, Cardiff in late 2010, and turning it into what is now Cardiff Music Studios, Jon discovered a large batch of prints and negatives.

A selection of the framed prints ready for the exhibition. Images courtesy of Jon Pountney

Jon recently explained the history of the project to me: "At first I found a couple of odd photos lying around and I didn't really know what they were, and had no idea why they were there.

"I put them aside but then started finding more and more and realised after a while I'd collected a large pile. Then I found the negatives. It was quite shocking how much there was, hundreds of prints and perhaps thousands of negatives.

"Straight away I realised they were of Cardiff. I recognised a few of the places - the first few that I looked at I could tell straight away where they were. And I just thought that they were so good, it's exactly the type of photography that I like to look at."

Jon's discovery was the work of photographer Keith S Robertson. His striking body of documentary photography taken in the early 1980s gave a snapshot of life in the capital city, largely in the Adamsdown, Splott and Butetown areas of the city.

In order to discover more information about the pictures, the anonymous people in them and the photographer behind the lens himself, Jon began to share them online.

He added: "First of all I put them on Tumblr, a blog site, and within a few days they were picked up by Ed Walker at Media Wales. So within three or four weeks it was a double page spread in the South Wales Echo. It snowballed from there - I was receiving emails every day."

Negatives in Jon's studio in preparation for the exhibition, which opens on 5 April

Jon has now made contact with many people in the photographs. His discovery of the photos has inspired him to get out and take photographs in the same communities 30 years on - including taking photos of some of the original subjects.

Jon also tracked down Keith S Robertson. Now in his eighties, Robertson had previously used Warwick Hall as his studio. According to Jon he had fallen out with the people who ran the building and was told that the locks had been changed and that his possessions had been thrown out - including his photographs and camera equipment. He never attempted to gain re-entry to the building and gave up on the thought of seeing the photos again.

Jon added: "A lot of my friends have said 'you were born to find these pictures'. They could have gone in a skip or sat there for another five years if we hadn't renovated the building. It would have been a crying shame for them to be lost. I don't think this kind of discovery happens every day - it must be a fairly unique thing to find. I feel really lucky."

There have been a number of similar documentary photography projects in th UK, such as Paul Trevor's photographs of 1970's Liverpool and Robert Haines' photos of Heolgerrig near Merthyr in the 1970s, which resulted in the book Once Upon a Time in Wales.

But as Pountney stresses, this is a pretty unique case: "In those cases the photographers had kept hold of the original pictures, they hadn't lost their pictures. I think this is a unique case where the pictures have been found by another photographer, and in seeing the pictures it just made me want to go out and take pictures, to do what Keith was doing.

"I've always wanted to take photography like that but it's not the easiest thing to do; people always want to know what you're up to, and when people see someone with a camera these days they're automatically suspicious of them! That's the thing about Keith's pictures, everybody looks so friendly in them."

Getting ready for the exhibition: over 100 prints showing the work of both photographers will be on show at the Wales Millennium Centre in Cardiff

Jon's connection with the people in the photographs came with the realisation that a number of the smiling faces in the pictures are sadly no longer alive.

He added: "That's been the saddest aspect of it for me. You expect a lot of the older people to have died, you take that for granted, but a surprising number of the really young kids have passed away.

"These photos are popping up and reminding people of them, which is quite nice in a way. Keith's pictures really get that person's personality, so it's obviously sad but a lot of people are really happy that they've seen the pictures.

"In particular there's a picture of a little girl on a bike, Denise Truman, and a lot people have said how nice the picture is and that they really miss her. It's really sad when it's someone who is so young, and has passed away perhaps years ago. It's a part of the project that I hadn't expected."

The free exhibition, Cardiff Before Cardiff - Keith S Robertson and Jon Pountney, runs at the Wales Millennium Centre from Thursday 5 April to Sunday 27 May 2012.

Visit the Cardiff Before Cardiff site to browse more photographs and join in the discussion on the project's Facebook page.

Wonder Chamber at Ffotogallery

2012-03-14T09:53:00+00:00

The latest exhibition at Ffotogallery explores the relationship between science, museology and art. Wonder Chamber is a solo exhibition of work by Wales-based artist Dr Karen Ingham, who is also a reader in Art, Science and Technology Interactions at Swansea Metropolitan University. Piece of Mind Mask, 2010 © Karen Ingham Ingham's work explores how scientific ideas and processes inform contemporary image making. This exhibition at the Penarth-based gallery brings together various bodies of work that she has created over the past decade. The exhibition plays with the idea of the Wunderkammer, and how diverse and bizarre items on display in museums centuries ago were divided into a standard classification system. One of the key ideas in Ingham's practice is to play on and subvert the way objects are collected, archived and displayed in science museums, putting them in the service of contemporary art. The Eye of the Lens, 2010 © Karen Ingham Wonder Chamber runs at Ffotogallery at Turner House, Plymouth Rd in Penarth until 14 April 2012. Karen Ingham will give a talk about her work and the exhibition on Thursday 22 March at 6.30pm. The event is free but booking is essential, so for further details visit ffotogallery.org.

Road To 2012 exhibition opens in Cardiff next month

2012-02-08T10:30:00+00:00

Over 30 large panels showing some of Britain's top athletes involved in the highly anticipated London 2012 Olympics will form an outdoor exhibition in Cardiff next month.

Paralympian Nathan Stephens. Photo: Bettina von Zwehl

The Road To 2012 touring exhibition features some of the highlights of one of the largest photographic commissions ever undertaken by the National Portrait Gallery in London.

Photos of athletes, and other other key figures involved in staging the Olympics, will be be printed on the panels.

Welsh sitters for some of the portraits include Paralympian Nathan Stephens, who competes in the javelin and discus events, and Welsh Paralympic swimming coach Billy Pye.

Cardiff will be the first to enjoy the exhibition, with the panels taking up residence just in front of the Wales Millennium Centre in Cardiff Bay.

Due to its outdoor nature, the free exhibition will be open 24 hours a day for people to experience.

Photographs from the project were first seen in two exhibitions held at the National Portrait Gallery in London, Road To 2012: Setting Out In 2010 and Road To 2012: Changing Pace In 2011.

In this new touring exhibition previously unseen photographs, by new photographers working on the final commissions, will be on show on the panels when the exhibition opens.

The free outdoor exhibition will open in Cardiff on Friday 30 March and will run until Sunday 27 May 2012. It then moves on to Edinburgh and later Birmingham.

See more portraits, listen to audio clips from the photographers and find out more about the exhibition on the Road to 2012 website, roadto2012.npg.org.uk.

Kutosis: In session, 7 January 2012, ��̳ Radio Wales

2012-01-11T08:46:52+00:00

It's a blast of fresh, catchy, tuneful, insightful rock with the most infectious energy, and I'm only beginning to unlock the potential of everything they sing about. Playing four live tracks from our ��̳ studios in Cardiff, they were the perfect band to start the new music line up on a Saturday night, and to start the new musical calendar.

Local photographer Simon Ayre was there to capture the atmosphere in a series of beautiful photos, that make the normally boring and antiquated ��̳ studios look ripe for rock 'n' roll.

Bethan Elfyn with Kutosis

Kutosis

Feel free to comment! If you want to have your say, on this or any other ��̳ blog, you will need to sign in to your ��̳ iD account. If you don't have a ��̳ iD account, you can register here - it'll allow you to contribute to a range of ��̳ sites and services using a single login.

Need some assistance? Read about ��̳ iD, or get some help with registering.

Daniel Blaufuks - Works On Memory

2012-01-04T14:00:00+00:00

A new installation by Portuguese artist Daniel Blaufuks will explore the complexities of the processes of memory and the role photography plays in freezing and retrieving memories.

The exhibition is due to open at the Ffotogallery in Penarth on 14 January with a talk by Blaufuks on the subject taking place from 11am- 2pm.

It is the first solo UK show for the artist, who uses the media of photography, video, sound and installation to express his fascination for how memory is formed through an accumulation of notions and details throughout life.

Blaufuks believes memory cannot be separated from our notions of time, space and place.

In his own contemporary photography, for which he has built up a strong reputation in Portugal, he uses each object he snaps as a springboard for something else, be it conscious or unconscious.

The works contained in the exhibition will explore how these cues for romantic relationships, emotional resonance or recollections just outside the realms of consciousness have significance yet can often remain beyond our reach.

As he says: "The hand-written note, postcard, concert ticket, passport stamp, shopping receipt; as individual images they appear to have little significance and meaning, but presented in a series they encourage us to look for patterns and relationships, to build a coherent narrative from the shards and fragments of personal or collective memory."

Another point of interest for Blaufuks is how individuals archive the important information in their lives and how that affects their ability to remember and the way they access those memories.

Images of film canisters, cassette tapes, celluloid film strips and negatives included in the installation cast a glance at technological developments in photography over time and muse on how, even as we find ever more newfangled ways to store and retrieve data, something true can also be lost in the process.

In using photography as his medium, Blaufuks investigates how it in itself becomes part of the process of memory and is more than just a trigger for past reminiscences or snapshots.

"From the act of photographing something new, or incorporating a found image in a work, new memories and associations are formed."

Works On Memory is co-curated by Filipa Oliveira and Ffotogallery Director David Drake and runs until 25 February. A new Ffotogallery publication, Works On Memory, will accompany the exhibition.

Exhibition preview: Friday 13 January 2012, 6.30-8.30pm. Artist talk: Saturday 14 January, 11am-2pm.

Photography exhibition explores Bangladeshi community

2011-11-25T11:23:26+00:00

A new photography exhibition at The Cardiff Story provides an intimate insight into the UK's Bangladeshi community.

The exhibition consists largely of observational portraits of Bengali women living in Cardiff, London and Sylhet, the region in north east Bangladesh where the majority of the UK's Bangladeshi community originates.

The portraits not only give an insight into their private lives and situations but also wider cultural issues of the Bangladeshi community. It is one of the most disadvantaged communities in the UK, suffering from high rates of obesity, diabetes and heart disease, and it is the older women in the community that typically suffer from ill health.

The images have been taken by documentary photographer Vanja Garaj, who is also a lecturer in digital media design at Brunel University. The photographs explore the ideas of migration, nutrition and ageing in a cross-section of Bengali women taken in the three very different cities.

Each striking photograph is accompanied by a caption, written by journalist Nick Hunt, that explains a little about the subject's situation, though all the women involved have been given pseudonyms.

Cardiff, Wales, UK - Leena, 37, was born in Cardiff, and her family speaks English at home - her children understand the Sylheti dialect, but cannot speak it well. She regularly visits Bangladesh to keep in touch with her family.

Garaj told me: "The two-year project involved a number of visits to Cardiff, several sessions in London and two prolonged trips to Bangladesh between January 2010 and September 2011.

"The majority of the photographs tell personal stories and provide an insight into the way of life of Bangladeshi women both in the UK and in Bangladesh and some illustrate the complex female-male relationships existing in the Bengali society.

"Besides their documentary aspect, the photographs and the exhibition are intended to raise a wider awareness of the issues many Bangladeshi women face in their daily lives."

Cardiff, Wales, UK - "Here I have only my children but in Bangladesh I have so many relatives around me," says Lubna, 52, who has been living in the UK for 31 years. "I used to feel like going back home. I was feeling so bad, but slowly everything was OK."

Sylhet City, Bangladesh - Most street restaurants in Bangladesh cater for rickshaw drivers and other male workers, and women generally feel uncomfortable to visit these places. Other more upscale food establishments, however, are frequented by both men and women, particularly in urban centres like Dhaka and Sylhet City.

The exhibition is part of Project MINA: Migration, Nutrition and Ageing across the Lifecourse in Bangladeshi Families: A Transnational Perspective - a three year research project funded by Economic and Social Research Council UK, under New Dynamics of Ageing Programme.

Bangladesh→UK: The Stories of Food, Ageing and Migration, A Photo Exhibition by Vanja Garaj, runs at The Cardiff Story Museum at The Old Library, The Hayes, Cardiff until Thursday 15 December.

Browse a photo gallery of some of Garaj's striking images on the ��̳ Wales News website.

Believing is Seeing exhibition at Ffotogallery

2011-11-01T11:55:37+00:00

The idea in some parts of the world that taking a photograph of somebody amounts to stealing their soul is nothing new.

But a fascinating new exhibition of work by seven Korean artists about to open at the Ffotogallery in Penarth goes a step further in exploring just how much of our selves can be captured in a portrait.

The term 'Junsinsajo' is used in traditional Korean portrait painting and signifies the replication of a person's shape and spirit. This means that taking a snapshot of a person is not restricted to a replication of their physical likeness, but should also embody the essence of their personality.

It is an idea that endures in contemporary photography and makes for one of the themes explored by the seven photographers incorporated in the Believing is Seeing exhibition, a body of work which also appears to question the very notion of 'Koreanness'.

The collaboration has been made possible through the work of Ffotogallery curator David Drake and Jiyoon Lee from the SUUM Academy & Project in Korea and was jointly funded by Arts Council Korea and Wales Arts International.

David says: "Each of the seven featured artists has a very different approach to photographic portraiture.

"The exhibition examines some common themes in contemporary Korean photographic art - its performative nature, ideas of duration and transience, nature and constructed reality, memory and illusion.

"Inverting the Western idiom 'seeing is believing', the exhibition features artists with markedly different strategies in relation to photographic portraiture, but who have in common the rejection of any approach to photography that emphasises visual verification and purely mechanical reproduction."

The exhibition will, he says, challenge our preconceptions about Korean culture.

"It's a very distinct culture but each artist is very aware of Western arts traditions, influenced by global contemporary art trends but remaining deeply rooted in Korean culture and traditions.

"The work featured in the exhibition also demonstrates the 'natural ambiguity' of the photographic image in that the portraits are no longer just depictions of people, they have a reality of their own and become a screen onto which the viewer projects their own relationships and emotions."

The featured artists are Byung-Hun Min, Duck Hyun Cho, Hein-Kuhn Oh, Hyun Mi Yoo, Je Baak, Kyungwoo Chun and the awardwinning photographer Seihon Cho. In all they have contributed 44 different works to the exhibition.

One of Duck Hyun Cho's works sees him combining an image of the queen with an image of his mother in a portrait realised as a graphite pencil drawing on canvas, where the canvas is allowed to hang loose, like a drape.

His collection sees him repeatedly blurring the boundaries between painting and photography and reflects a keen interest in personal memory and collective history, identity, family and spirituality.

In Oh's work, his subjects in many cases break a Korean taboo, as they are teenage girls embracing the world of cosmetics and the myriad ways it can alter and sexualise appearance.

Chun has become well-known for his poetically blurred photographic portraits, created in a very unconventional way of dealing with time and space.

The exhibition runs from 10 November to 17 December with a private view on 9 November and a curators' talk on 1 December at 6.30pm.

Admission is free to all visitors. For more details visit www.ffotogallery.org.

My Llyn Peninsula

2011-10-17T14:34:27+00:00

Stunning photographs of the Llŷn Peninsula form the basis of a new exhibition at the Oriel Plas Glyn-y-Weddw in Llanbedrog, Pwllheli.

Adults and children alike were invited to share their thoughts on what the historic and picturesque coastline means to them by capturing those expressions on film and then submitting them to the gallery.

Curator Mari Lewis-Jones said: "We were not looking for the best technical photograph. Originality is what we were after.

"We asked people what came to mind when they think of 'Pen Llyn'?

"It could be anything from the view from your garden to a special building, or even individuals who make the area special to you."

What resulted was a collection of images capturing the immense peace of one of Wales' most tranquil spots in an intensely vibrant and varied way.

The winning picture Gwenllian and Rhun by Greta Hughes, catches two children playing in the sea-drenched sand at low tide with a stunning expanse of beach and smoky coastline behind them. It and a selection of other images have been framed and will be displayed alongside the current exhibition by local photographer, Gareth Jenkins, who was one of the competition judges.

Gwenllian and Rhun by Greta Hughes

Second prize went to Jonty Storey for an intriguing portrait of St Tudwals, affectionately known as 'St Tuds' while Peter Baumann scooped third for a shot of wonderfully patterned sand with a mirror shard reflecting the brightly coloured facades of beach huts.

St Tuds by Jonty Storey

Highly commended were pieces by Charles Henshaw, Gillian Walker and Guto Lloyd Davies.

The exhibition will run until 6 November alongside work by Gareth Thomas, who explores the effects of light and colour on the landscape, mainly in watercolour, but with works in all media including pastel applied over watercolour.

Abersoch Beach by Peter Baumann

Works by Wrexham artist Keith Bowen are also on show, with a series of small oil paintings of the Ancient Churches of Llyn as well as his usual subjects of countryside figures and mountain streams.

London-born Daniel Roberson has lived in Machynlleth, Mid Wales for the last seven years where he has been developing his work. On show at the gallery are his realist painters inspired by the places he has been and the people he has met. His current exhibition at Oriel Plas Glyn y Weddw is entitled Memory, Observation and Imagination.

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Kutosis: In session, 7 January 2012, ������̳ Radio Wales

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My Llyn Peninsula

Kutosis: In session, 7 January 2012, ��̳ Radio Wales