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.

With Sgôr at Swansea Performance Weekend 20th November.
Glynn Vivian Art Gallery, 15.30 – 20.00. See poster for details of all events.
@lindersterling
@vrosssmith
@hollyslingsby
@Glynnvivian
@swanseaperformance
@sgor_score

photos (top): Dafydd Williams (below): Pete Evans

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

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.

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’.

Video sequence in which the Divine Comedy is relocated to a brutalist office block in Cardiff city centre.

Alongside a terrific line up of writers and artists, my video can be seen in the 4 page special edition of
Junction Box, celebrating Dante’s 700th anniversary. Editor Lyndon Davies.
https://glasfrynproject.org.uk/w/7086/penny-hallas-elevator/

Image: Elevator, 2nd floor: video duration 5 minutes