Found Gallery – will open its doors on the 5th July. The new contemporary art gallery is on The Bulwark in Brecon. Found is situated in a prominent position, opposite Y Gaer, the new community hub, museum, gallery and library that is also due to open this summer.
Local residents, Punch and James Maughan, have been working on Found Gallery for the last year – aiming to build on their support for the arts having hosted Art @ No 10 for seven years and Punch more recently working as the Visual Arts Coordinator at Theatr Brycheiniog.
Their first exhibition, ‘First Found’, opens to the public on Friday, July 5th and will run until Sunday, August 4th. First Found will feature a group of artists and makers from across Wales as well as the iconic documentary photographer Roger Tiley. Roger, ceramicist Kim Colebrook and water colourist Philip Ross are connected by the poignant theme of mining, a story that has always resonated with the Maughans. The exhibition will include Kim’s graduate piece ‘Survival’ – a memorial to Aberfan. Other makers in the exhibition have been chosen ….because they loved them!
In the 1930s 1, Bulwark was a shop called ‘Ships and Sealing Wax’, an eclectic phrase from the poem ‘The Walrus and The Carpenter’ by Lewis Carroll. As part of the first exhibition, and ongoing, the Maughans have captured some of this history by commissioning a print maker from West Wales to do a series of collagraphs of the characters in the poem. As Ships and Sealing Wax the shop was run by the Murray family of Penpont and a sales ledger lent by Penpont will be framed in the gallery.
Found will be hosting three events relating to the first exhibition:
Saturday July 13th. 2pm ‘Kim Colebrook, Ceramicist, in Conversation’
Kim will talk about her journey, late in life, to become a ceramics artist; how she has linked her new passion for clay to her career in heritage and tourism; and will explore her approach to creating the group of works that remember one of south Wales' worst disasters, Aberfan.
Wednesday, 17th July. 2pmCeri Thompson , the curator of the Coal Mining Collections for Big Pit, National Coal Museum will discuss the life of Dr Henry Naunton Davies who was from a family of Rhondda doctors in the 19th century. He came to the notice of the wider world for his actions during the rescue of trapped men from the Tynewydd Inundation of 1877, for which he was awarded the first British Medical Association Gold Medal.
Sunday August 4th. 2pm ‘Roger Tiley – Reflections on life as a Documentary Photographer’Roger will be sharing his work on the last day of the First Found exhibition talking about why it is important for him, as a documentary photographer and film maker, to become part of a community. Roger is currently working on an approximately 90 minute documentary film about life in the Dulais Valley, South Wales, talking to some of the real life characters from the much loved film, Pride.
If you would like to attend any of these talks you can register via Found’s website. www.foundgallery.co.uk
Found’s ongoing exhibitions will celebrate the diversity of talent across Wales and beyond, featuring established artists and makers, the hidden secrets that are discovered and graduates who are emerging as the next generation of the artist community! The summer exhibition ‘Jazz Finds’ will open on August 8th to coincide with the well-established Brecon Jazz Festival. This exhibition will feature the jazz paintings of John Clare, founder of Honest Jon’s Records and connected to the 100 Club in London, some never seen jazz photographs by the very well-known photographer John Bulmer; as well as black and white photography by Max Farrar taken in the jazz scene in Leeds in the 1980s. Jazz Finds will include 5 other makers responding to the musical theme.
Gallery opening times: Tuesday – Sunday, 10am – 5pm
