Penny Hallas

Machines for the Regulation of Sensibility.
2 diptychs included in the Wales International Painting Prize: Through Tomorrow’s Eyes
20 July – 11 August BEEP 2012

For hundreds of years people have been visiting the caves at Craig y Cilau National Nature Reserve. Drawings, messages and names in the cave can be found dating from at least 1787, when Frederick J Fredericks made his mark.

On 30th October 2011, as part of Arts Month Xtra, artists, poets and musicians embarked on a series of arts events in the Nature reserve, including an artist led walk from Llangattock to the caves. Artists, Poets and Performers include:
artists: Susan Adams, Stefhan Caddick, Morag Colquhoun, Tessa Waite, Chris Nurse, Penny Hallas,
Poets: Lyndon Davies, John Goodby, David Greenslade, Graham Hartill, Anthony Mellors, Scott Thurston, Christopher Twigg
Musicians: Gillian Stevens – Crwth. Team Sports (Matthew Lovett, Jimmy Ottley, Ian Watson)

More details of the Frederick J Fredericks event at www.stefhancaddick.co.uk/new/frederick-j-fredericks

Collaboration with poets and musicians continues, to explore the myth through the interplay
between spoken, musical and visual languages. These films use images from The Orpheus
Drawings (see ‘artwork’) and recordings and film made in and around Craig y Cilau National Nature reserve
and Eglwys Faen cave.

For more on the Orpheus Project click here

Regulator included in an exhibition of sketches of mechanical and electronic devices.
10 Sept – 16 Nov 2011.
Opening Saturday 17 Sept 5 – 7 pm
TestBed at Oriel Davies Gallery, The Park, Newtown, Powys, SY16 2NZ

image courtesy of Brecknock Museum and Art gallery

40 drawings from the Orpheus project were shown at Y Lle Celf, National Eisteddfod Wrecsam 2011.

Gwilym Morus was commissioned as the Art Space Poet at this year’s National Eisteddfod, Wrecsam. One of the ten pieces he responded to in the exhibition was the ‘Orpheus drawings’. His response was in words and music, so as well as the lyrics going up on the wall alongside the work, he also recorded an album. Orffiws is the ninth track on the album: the words are given below, and the album can be heard by following the link to Gwilwm’s website, below.

Orffiws
Ymateb i ‘Orffiws’ gan Penny Hallas

…sef bardd chwedlonol y Groegwyr a rwygwyd yn
ddarnau gan ferched gwyllt y Bacchanalia.

Mae darnau bach ei hunan
ar chwâl ymysg y chwyn –
y bardd anfarwol truan
wedi’i hau fel hadau syn.

Yn ymraniadau amwyll
ei gyflwr chwith caiff fyw,
ag yntau’n gasgliad gorffwyll
o greiriau rhyfedd, gwyw.

Mae bellach yma’n rhythu
lle nad oes iddo hedd,
a’i ffrwythlon ddatgymalu
yn gwrthod iddo fedd.

Gwilym Morus (2011)

Dilyniant yn nhrefn yr albwm lle Troediaf Ymddengys y Llawr
Ewch i www.caneuon.com/babellgelf

Eisteddfod Genedlaethol Cymru Wrecsam a’r Fro                                                                                                                       www.eisteddfod.org.uk

25 Jun – 16 Jul 2011  5 visual artists to whom drawing is the mainstay of their creative practice.
24 June 7pm Private View opened by Professor Howard Riley, Swansea Metropolitan University

Five dedicated practitioners, each applying their individual intelligence of seeing, but to a common end: the sharing of experiences of the world – perceptual, emotional, and imaginational – through the selection and combination of visual elements; line, tone, shape, texture and colour. Such tangible representations in turn allow us, the viewers, to adopt, adapt our moods, our attitudes towards those experiences being shared, thus realising the potential of one of the fundamental social functions of art: to make the familiar strange – to stretch our perspective on life. Elysium: a state of ideal happiness. How apt!’

29 Jan 2011 ‘ Encounters beyond the page/screen/stage’. A one-day research workshop event and exhibition. University of Exeter, Department of English.

As part of the Orpheus Project, a presentation will be made of film and images by Penny Hallas, script by Lyndon Davies, with music drawn from Gill Steven’s composition ‘Sounds from Solitude’

In November Glasfryn Seminars played host to Border/Lines, a group of poets and academics who come together to discuss literature, critical practice and theory and to explore links, differences and new approaches to an understanding of their relationship.

The chosen text was Maurice Blanchot’s essay The Gaze of Orpheus, and people were asked to respond to this and to the general theme of the Orphic myths. The day commenced with a paper around these topics, by Lyndon Davies, and the rest of the morning and part of the afternoon was given over to discussion.

During the morning, artist Penny Hallas had created two drawings for the Border/Lines event in her studio upstairs, and people were taken one by one to the studio to record their pre-prepared responses to the Blanchot essay to camera. After each reading the guest was invited to change both drawings, one with a rubber and one with a piece of charcoal. When everyone had done this, people came together to improvise written responses to the day, creating brief sentences and word-patterns which were then torn in half, each part of the sentence acquiring a response and a completion by another of the participants.?Armed with these reconstituted sentences the participants returned to the studio where, with the use again of rubber and charcoal, they performed a mass intervention on the drawings.

The day was documented by use of audio and filmed recordings, as well as by individual written texts which have been uploaded onto a Wiki Site.

Present: Philip Gross, Alice Entwistle, Kevin Mills, Wendy Mulford, Samantha Wynne Rhydderch, Richard Gwyn, Jeremy Hooker, Graham Hartill, Anne Cluysenaar, Lyndon Davies, Penny Hallas

Essex University Conference: ‘Myth, Literature and the Unconscious’
2nd, 3rd, 4th Sept 2010.

As part of the ongoing Orpheus Project, a presentation was made of film and images by Penny Hallas, script by Lyndon Davies, with music drawn from Gill Steven’s composition ‘Sounds from Solitude’. Making of the film was supported by technical wizard Steve Groves.

For more information about the Orpheus Project, click on ‘projects’ under categories.

This Arts Council Wales Research and Development project involves collaboration with poets and writers, Graham Hartill, John Goodby and Lyndon Davies, and musician Gillian Sevens, (Composer, Crwth and Viola player).

The project is an exploration of why the Orpheus myth is still so potent today, informed by the interplay between spoken, musical and visual languages.

Work has focussed on the caving system at Craig Y Cilau National Nature reserve on Mynydd Llangattock, with artwork, films, readings, recordings and crwth playing in and around the caves.