Monmouthshire commissioned artists
Gemma Williams
Gemma is a doctor from South Wales, currently working in the Aneurin Bevan University Health Board at the Early Intervention Service for Psychosis. Whilst not formally trained as an artist, Gemma has engaged in various different disciplines of art over many years. She particularly enjoys sculpture and has made several different sculptures mostly using wire framework and papier mache. Gemma has previously been involved with Superdragons II in Newport and designed two dragons “Penny Pendraig” and “Firestarter”.
Mike Erskine
Mike is a filmmaker and digital media creator based in Usk, Monmouthshire. His journey into filmmaking began over 10 years ago when he became frustrated by the lack of attention on environmental issues. He could see lots of people and projects across Wales responding to social and environmental challenges and wanted to use film to share their stories.
Since then he's been continually exploring themes around people and place, and the connections between the social, economic and natural worlds we live in. The films he likes to create are a mix of documentary and experimental; looking at things from a fresh angle, getting into details and working with communities to co-produce his films. Giving a voice to those not often heard is something he's always thinking about in his approach.
Patricia Statham Maginness
Patricia is a Northern Irish artist based in South Wales, who creates textured paintings in an earthy, almost monochrome palette. She works with encaustic wax, oils, iron gall ink and natural pigments.
Her work centers on connection with our homeland and the natural world, language and Celtic mythology.
She studied at Glasgow School of Art, University of Ulster and University of Brighton, earning a Post-Graduate Certificate in Secondary Education. Her years of teaching inspired her to create educational resources exploring ancient techniques, which links directly with her studio practice.
She has exhibited widely across the UK in Belfast, London, Essex and Cric Oriel in Crickhowell, where she is a regular exhibitor.
Tiffany Murray
Tiffany Murray is a Writer, she was born in South West Sussex and grew up in Wales. Tiffany’s memoir, 'My Family and Other Rock Stars' is published by Fleet. Her novels 'Diamond Star Halo', 'Happy Accidents' and 'Sugar Hall', have variously been shortlisted for the Wodehouse Bollinger Prize and received the Roger Deakin Award for nature writing. Tiffany has been a Hay Festival Fiction Fellow, a Fulbright scholar, and a Senior Lecturer. Her series, ‘Hulda’s Café’ is available on BBC Sounds.
Newport commissioned artists
Beth Wilks
Beth Wilks is a teacher and visual artist who works mainly through the medium of papercutting. She enjoys this technique in particular as the work is intricate and detailed which contrasts with the naïve and simplistic appearance of papercuts. She also finds it very satisfying, and sometimes challenging to produce a piece of work where all elements are joined in a continuous line. Being somewhat of a luddite, her work is created the old fashioned way, using a scalpel. Beth enjoys playing with elements of art which are juxtaposed, such as creating something mundane in a delicate or surprising way, and she also likes to include elements of humour in her work. Beth is inspired by the variety of fragments which come together to make us who we are such as places, words, music and people of significance, combined with a good dollop of nostalgia and a hint of the ridiculous. Her work often features popular culture, and being a proud Newportian, specifically Newport culture, which is a breed all of its own!
Connor Allen
Connor is the former Children’s Laureate of Wales and associate artist of The Riverfront in Newport. He’s a multidisciplinary artist who graduated from Trinity Saint David as an Actor in 2013 and has worked extensively since then with companies such as Taking Flight Theatre, Sherman Theatre, Manchester Royal Exchange, National Theatre Wales and many more. He wrote and performed in his acclaimed debut show 'The Making of a Monster' at the Wales Millennium Centre in 2022 (playtext published by Aurora Metro Books).
He is a former member of the BBC Wales Welsh Voices and Welsh Royal Court writing groups. He has written for Wales Millennium Centre, BBC Radio 4, BBC Wales, Sherman Theatre, National Theatre Wales and more. Connor's work is heavily inspired by elements of his own life such as grief, love, masculinity, identity, and ethnicity. He was a Jerwood Live Work Fund recipient, won the Rising Star Wales Award 2021 and was the 2023 winner of the Imison Award for his Radio 4 audio drama ‘The Making Of A Monster’.
His debut poetry collection Dominoes (adult and general readers) and children's collection Miracles were published by Lucent Dreaming in 2023.
Kristian Dent
Kristian Dent is a proud working-class Valley Boy and a playful Illustrative Artist. Through his work, he loves to provoke a curiosity with humour and deliberately attempts to capture the attention of all ages. He enjoys creating profound messages with a fun and approachable tale or sentiment to discover. His weapons of choice are mostly a quill, brushes, inks and his imagination.
Through the years, Kristan has taken part in an array of art fayres and has worked creatively with larger corporations building promotional and event visuals. He’s created a few murals and has worked on many private commissions. He’s also recently been working on a children’s book illustration set with an author, which he loves doing. In part, he loves this process due to being a big kid but moreover he’s personally felt the impact an engaging illustration has on a curious mind. He has no question that it’s this very sentiment that is fundamental to his philosophy. To fill a curious mind with more curiosity, to show patience in explanation and to give undivided attention.
Olivia Coles
Olivia is an artist proudly born, raised, and still based in Newport, Wales and graduated with a BA (Hons) in Illustration from Cardiff Metropolitan University. Since graduating in 2016, Olivia has been steadily growing their career as a freelance illustrator, working with a range of commercial and personal clients. Alongside client work, they actively maintain a personal art practice which explores and celebrates their identity, interests, and surrounding communities. Olivia creates playful illustrations that exhibit queer joy and resilience and their current work provides positive representations for trans experiences. They primarily use colouring pencils to complete pieces and like to make work that celebrates the Queer experience, including their own, whilst also highlighting the continued need for progress in LGBTQ+ rights and visibility. Olivia’s illustrations have a playful, uplifting style and are dedicated to representing marginalised and Global Majority communities. As an artist local to Newport, they strive to create work which conveys the diversity and creative spirit of Newport and wider Wales.
Rhondda Cynon Taf commissioned artists
Bridie Doyle-Roberts
Bridie is a multi-discipline artist based in Pontypridd. She founded a circus, dance and outdoor arts charity called 'Citrus Arts' in 2008 and has been acting as Co-Director for the past 15 years. In this role she has created touring theatre, festival and site specific productions and held tenures with Green Man festival, London Youth Circus and Circomedia. She has also worked on collaborative projects with Theatr Genedlaethol Cymru, Ballet Cymru and Marc Rees and delivered education and community development work with the Lead Creative Schools project, Arts Active and Bath Spa University.
In recent years she has been developing her individual arts practise with a focus on visual arts and bilingual poetry, often working with furniture as a canvas for visual storytelling. This work explores the human connection we have with the objects in our everyday lives and what these items tell of identity, values, language and culture. Being based in the Valleys also inspires her work, connecting with the changing landscape, its people and its history. The work invites people to sit, experience and use the pieces in a practical way whilst also provoking discussion and debate. Some of her recent projects have involved working with the community to draw out personal stories within items of furniture, reflect on the concept of having a seat at the table, and responding to issues related to littering and the death of the high street. Bridie is partially sighted.
Jack Skivens
Jack is an illustrator who works in water colour, inks and pencils and occasionally charcoal. He is inspired by the world around him and loves to find hidden stories in everyday things, responding to his surroundings. He loves to tell stories with his illustrations for all to enjoy and tries to make them appeal to all ages. He likes to explore approaches to illustrations and is passionate about finding interesting ways to tell stories though illustration. He works from his home studio in Pontypridd and loves to include a forest walk in his morning routine.
Kyle Stead
Kyle Stead (he/him) is a neurodivergent benefit class multidisciplinary artist born in the Rhondda Valley, South Wales. His practices include but are not limited to performing, theatre making, creative producing, media production and facilitating. He has a high interest in taking real life experiences to create work that offers audiences a raw, gritty and authentic insight into the world that is being created. Kyle is passionate about creating working environments that are trauma informed. This is important in order to boldly explore and be brave with creative choices. He wants to fight the underrepresentation of artists from low socio-economic backgrounds, while also looking at improving working conditions for neurodivergent individuals. As a school dropout, Kyle is passionate about alternative education and using the creative industry as a space for discovery, experimentation and celebration. Kyle uses spoken word poetry as a form of expression, often fusing his word with beatboxing. As someone who has struggled with his mental health and the ability to control his anger, he has found comfort in using the artform of spoken word poetry as his release. Kyle was a recipient of the Weston Jerwood Creative Bursary 2020-2022. www.kylestead.co.uk @Kyle_Stead (on X, formerly Twitter and Instagram).
Sylvia and Jonathan
Over the past two decades, composers and sound-designers Sylvia Strand and Jonathan Gregory have scored and crafted sound-design for numerous award-winning TV-series, films, drama-shorts and documentaries, which have been broadcast worldwide. Passionate about storytelling through sound and music, their work has achieved over a million streams online and they are often commissioned to provide original songs for opening titles end credits of films. In 2022 they had their first premier at the palais de Festival in Cannes for the award winning short - ‘The Last Union’.
Sylvia and Jonathan often take inspiration from the community where they live and work, the Upper Rhondda Fach. Since upgrading their studio to cinematic surround {Dolby Atmos}, they have been exploring 360 immersive sound both in their film/TV work and as part of a large scale community project ‘Our Space – Ein Lle Ni’. The project works with over 600 members of their community, from schools, choirs, bands and performers, devising a concept album in 360 audio, celebrating the history of the Pen-Y-Cymoedd area from the ice-age to the present day. One of the pieces, Black Gold, features four Male Voice choirs as well as mining-sounds recorded in full 360 - from pickaxes to trams, blast fans and pit-horns, all recorded ambisonically, giving the listener the feeling of being deep underground. The four choirs from four different valleys represent the different teams from different mines who despite living in different villages on the surface would meet underground when going to work.
Other projects include producing, writing, and performing twice in the Eurovision Song Contest, and since 2018 their Film and TV work has also evolved into story development and TV production, leading to an international co-production deal with Viacom CBS for an 8-part global TV series in collaboration with Wildflame (Wales), Zig Zag (England) and Tindefilm (Norway).
Keep an eye on our website, newsletter and social media to find out more about these artists and their chosen projects.
