Elan Links has awarded artist residencies to two artists for their 2023 residency scheme, Gweni Llwys and Rowena Harris.
These residencies are delivered in partnership with Aberystwyth Arts Centre and Midlands Arts Centre respectively.
Elan Links and Aberystwyth Arts Centre have awarded their 2023 artist residency to emerging Welsh artist Gweni Llwyd.
Gweni is renowned for her playful work which spans tactile and digital realms, exploring the symbiotic relationship between human–made infrastructures and the natural world. She lives between Rotterdam and Wales, and is currently undertaking a Masters in Fine Art at the Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam in the Netherlands.
Gweni will spend four weeks in Elan Valley and four weeks in Aberystwyth building links between both locations. She will receive support from Aberystwyth Art Centre’s Curator Ffion Rhys and Artist and Project Manager Richard Powell. The residency is offering an opportunity to create a discourse between these very different locations framed through the lens of water as resource, land use and the climate emergency.
Gweni Llwyd said “In my recent projects, I’ve been examining the symbiotic relationships between human-made infrastructures and the natural world, exploring industrial pasts, and imagining their futures. What might they look, sound, and feel like? Who might live there? I frequently use sites – such as rivers, quarries, and experiences with land and people as starting points, so I’m looking forward to seeing where Cwm Elan and Aberystwyth take me and my making. I usually work with sound, drawing, video, computer animation and installation, so I’m really excited to strip my making back to basics while on the residency, leave the confines of some of the technologies I work with a lot, and see what happens while immersed in fascinating locations. I hope to develop a body of work in Cwm Elan and Aberystwyth that directly relates to my time getting to know the land, human and more-than-human inhabitants of these places.”
Elan Links and Midlands Arts Centre have awarded their 2023 artist residency to queer Birmingham based artist Rowena Harris(they/she)
Rowena Harris focuses on how knowledge from disability, sick and crip perspectives, including their own, can inform methods, rhythms, structures and sensibilities for making work. Through moving image and CGI, creative non-fiction writing and discussion, sculpture and installation, they explore bio-cultural and socio-medical dynamics that flow through and affect human bodies differently. Often explored with feminist, queer and crip theory, their work is increasingly concerned with invisible disability and structures of ableism, as well as vectors of power within societal factors that shape how we feel, understand and make sense of our own bodies.
Elan Links is partnering with Midlands Arts Centre on this residency. In late 19th century the wider area of Elan Valley was purchased by Birmingham and a series of dams and reservoirs constructed to collect and transport water to Birmingham. Several farms and buildings were relocated and the landscape was flooded, at great cost to the local community. The reservoirs continue to supply water to the city to this day. This residency is an opportunity to develop a dialogue between these locations, which are so profound linked by water supply.
Elan Links is partnering with Midlands Arts Centre on this residency. In late 19th century the wider area of Elan Valley was purchased by Birmingham and a series of dams and reservoirs constructed to collect and transport water to Birmingham. Several farms and buildings were relocated and the landscape was flooded, at great cost to the local community. The reservoirs continue to supply water to the city to this day. This residency is an opportunity to develop a dialogue between these locations, which are so profound linked by water supply.
