Penny Hallas

New work all ready to go to West Wharf Gallery, Cardiff CF1 5DB. Opening event 15.03.2025 3-6pm.
Exhibition continues to April 25th. Open Fri & Sat 10am – 5pm
Concentric is the latest of a long-running series celebrating International Women’s Day, conceived
and curated by Jacqueline Alkema.

Top image: Operative 116. (2020-2025) Oil and oil bar on 5 panels. Total size 80 x 55 cms
Below: Operative 122 (2025) Oil and oil bar on 5 reversible panels (each 15 x 44.5cms)

Using the modernist art aesthetic I was born into; inspired by engineering manuals and diagrams demonstrating systems for the use of resources; responding to vast engineering works I witness in and around the Bannau Brycheiniog National Park, the ‘Operatives’ relate to intermeshed creative and destructive forces.

I am grateful to artist Jane Lawson for this reference: ‘In her 2021 book Hospicing Modernity, Vanessa Machado de Oliveira describes modernity as a worlding story, one that presents itself “as a general project of civilisation that seeks to engineer society through humanism, reason, science, progress, and technology” but that rests on a foundation of violent extraction, exploitation and ecocide that is leading to climate breakdown. We need to enable modernity to die a good death in order for something better to be born, but we will only be able to create something genuinely different if we first become aware and suspicious of what modernity allows us to desire and imagine.’
Jane Lawson. Artist Environmental Lead at Castlefield Gallery and co-ordinator of SPARK Network

GPS Signal Lost is making a new appearance at Oriel Carn, as part of SYMUD, an exhibition of moving image. 07.02.25 – 15.03.25.

7th Feb 7-9pm LAWNSIAD | LAUNCH. Oriel Carn, Castle Ditch, Caernarfon LL55 2AY

GPS System Lost is concerned with observing and recording, over a period of five years, some of the strange interplay between human and natural activity in and around the caves of Craig Y Cilau National Nature Reserve, Mynydd Llangatwg. It is a collage of films and stills, animations and projections in the tunnels of Eglwys Faen, using centuries of graffitti as backdrop. The film also plays as a personal homage to my father, photographer and one-time pot-holer, on whose last camera the material for this film was gathered.
(2016) Duration 10:30 minutes, 16:9 ratio. Soundpiece, Lyndon Davies (2024)

National and International Video/Film artists in collaboration with Barcelona LOOP Festival 2024 and Damer House Gallery, Ireland

Alalimon Galeria presents Homeland 2024 in collaboration with the Culture Association ‘La Bibliomusicineteca’,
Carrer de Vila i Vilà 76, 08004 Barcelona, Catalunya, Spain

14 Nov at 8pm to  20 Dec 2024

Image: cropped still from Maelstrom, a 6 minute video sequence made from collaborative exchanges between
David Bickley, Ireland and Penny Hallas, Wales

For more details see @damerhouseartgallery

Bringing together the work of women artists from Rogue Artists’ Studios, Manchester, alongside 12 selected artists from around the UK.
3 Oct 6-9pm Private View – all welcome 
5 Oct -27 Oct Open Saturdays and Sundays 12-4pm and by appointment during the week. 

Given that my residency at @rogueartists_studios is to focus on video / performance elements in my work, it’s great to have the chance to show a video piece from last year (image 1. A Private Land, 30 mins) which is informing new work in progress in these amazing listed former school buildings (image 2)

Rogue Women 3 is organised and co-curated by Margaret Cahill and Jen Orpin with guest curator Leanne Green head of exhibitions at Tate Liverpool.

Rogue Artists’ Studios CIC, 2 – 6 Barrass Street, Openshaw, Manchester M11 1PU

A month’s residency through September with Manchester’s Rogue Artists’ Studios to dig into the role of video
in collaborative live art performance – and how this might connect with live performance to camera.

The residency will be a chance for on-the-job training and professional development: reviewing material I’ve
been working on this year and testing it out with new partners in new environments, linking in with some of
Rogue’s 90+ studio artists and with performers and video artists through Company Chameleon‘s Art Lab / Jam OPEN FLOOR X TEST CARD.

An important part of the residency will be the input of mentors and critical friends in Manchester and Wales –  supporting development of my creative practice but also potential wider benefits through links and exchanges between Wales / Manchester arts communities. Read more about it here. Warm thanks to support from:

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A three day festival of experimental performance and sound art across three floors with
tactileBOSCH, Shift Cardiff, Carnedd Caerdydd.
July 19 – 21 Ty Wilcox House, Dunleavy Drive, Cardiff, CF11 0BA

My video sequence of the Usk floodplain, with its submerged fallen trees, along with the ruined floor from a psychiatric hospital in Talgarth, provides the setting for the fluxus performance ‘nivea cream piece’, ‘dressing’, and ‘nap’. This durational happening on Saturday afternoon consists of a series of body-based pieces that explore intimacy, connection, personal space, and the unpredictable and uncontrollable forces in nature and within ourselves. @Sgôr_Score

Day & weekend tickets are available.
See @tactileBosch for more information about the programme, performers and events and the link in their bio for how to book tickets.

29 June – 20 July New work in Unearthing / Dadorchuddio, a group exhibition with
Marja Bonada, Katie Cyfenw, Susanne Ring, as part of Finland/Wales/Germany exchanges.

Weds – Sat 3 – 7pm Galerie Toolbox, Koloniesraße 120, 13359 Berlin
20 July, 4 – 5pm I’ll be in the gallery with Susanne Ring

Supported by Arts Council Wales

15 June – 6 July Three-week artist residency in Eryri National Park with accompanying exhibition
at Oriel Plas Brondanw and workshop at Oriel Caffi Croesor

Hosted by Noëlle Griffiths at Hafod Art Studio.

11 Apr 2024 at Chapter, Cardiff CF5 1QE.
‘SCORE will delve into an exploration of performativity and play within the Welsh context in a
new site-specific commission’.

It’s been a real pleasure to develop work with SCORE on Maes Chwarae over the last few months.
Here are 2 images of my video and projection made as part of experimental preparation for our performance
– the first showing Rob Oros and the second Tim Martin-Jones.

SCORE Experimentica artists are: Beth Greenhalgh, Tess Wood, Vivian Ross-Smith, Tessa Waite, Iona Hannagan Lewis, Lewis Prosser, Tim Martin-Jones, Rob Oros, Penny Hallas.
‘SCORE is a pulsating slime of oddballs and artists from across Wales. Devised in 2022 as a provocation to explore ‘live-ness’ and performativity within the Welsh context, SCORE is a curious constellation of energies and aspirations, constantly reshaping and redefining the boundaries of its own creative expression. Central to the group’s method is a thirst for playfulness, collaboration, co-authorship, grit, tenderness, the ephemeral, and the ‘live’. Working together to perform in the face of the unknown’.

10 Feb – 6 May 2024 Gallery 2, Aberystwyth Arts Centre.
17 Mar 2-4pm. Artist talk with Alan Bowring, geologist and Geopark Officer.
Celebrating the bicentenary of the myriorama.

200 years ago J.H. Clark and S. Leigh created a game to tap into a new craze sweeping Europe.
Meaning ‘many views’, their Myriorama was a set of 16 illustrated cards that could be rearranged to create
a near-endless variety of cohesive scenes. Long before cinema this was seen as a fine amusement for all
the family. I use but subvert the Myriorama’s idealised picturesque aesthetic, combining and intermingling narratives, deliberately introducing elements of dissonance and misfit as a way of extending conversations
about how we perceive and value the land in a time of environmental crisis.

Gweld y wybodaeth yma yn Gymraeg ar-lein

Aberystwyth Arts Centre, Aberystwyth University, Penglais Campus SY23 3DE
Artist talk in the Round Studio, Aberystwyth Arts Centre. Free / am dim