Penny Hallas

Elysium Gallery, 210 High Street, Swansea SA1 1PE.
Opening event 6 Feb, 7pm. All welcome.
Exhibition continues to 28th March, Weds – Sat 11-6pm

17 Feb 7pm Online artist talk: Tuesday 17th February, 7pm

21 Feb 2pm Gallery talk: Deep Time, with Alan Bowring, Geologist and Fforest Fawr Geopark Development Officer.

In ‘Sighting’, Penny Hallas explores the complex nature of our perception and experience of place. A sighting can be something that simply happens to us, punching through our inattention, dismantling our expectations, or it can be a deliberate act of focusing in. Using but subverting traditional techniques and formats, such as the myriorama, along with home-made, idiosyncratic viewing devices, Penny examines the mechanisms by which we attempt to make sense of the world and to situate ourselves within it. How does a space, in the shape, for instance, of a building, an institution, a landscape, become personal, ‘meaningful’? What do we bring to it and what happens in us when the meanings are usurped or when such places are threatened, damaged or made unavailable? All of which raises social and political questions about power, access and control, and the impact of changing attitudes on social relationships, land and environment but it touches deeply too on our most intimate psychological responses. More ludic than documentary, Penny brings a spirit of play, fantasy, improvisation and mischief to her enquiries, arriving often in the most unexpected places, by means of entirely unexpected paths.

A Private Land / Tir Diarffordd has been selected for the ‘Power / Control’ category of the Axis Art Film Festival.
10 Sept, from 7pm

The Film Festival runs from 8-14 September 2025 with seven themed events, showing over 30 short films by artists from across the UK and beyond. Book your place for all the online screenings and events here

A six week summer residency at G39 with SGÔR performance collective culminates in free live performance events.
9 Aug 5-8pm MOSH part 1, G39 Cardiff
21 Aug 6-8pm MOSH part 2, Ffotogallery, Cardiff

SGÔR residency / performers: Beth Greenhalgh, Tess Woof, Tim Martin-Jones, Vivian Ross-Smith, Tessa Waite, Penny Hallas, Abi Hubbard, Robert Oros, Iona Lewis, Pete Evans plus special guests.

For more info see @tactileBosh
Pete Evans

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.

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’.