Past Exhibitions

Ruth Koffer
A colourful place in which to dream

26/10/2024 – 16/02/2025

Ruth is a visual storyteller from Aberystwyth. She has been exhibiting widely throughout England and Wales for 25 years and her work is held in various public collections such as Moma Wales and National library of Wales.

She looks for inspiration for her narrative in museums, at festivals, exhibitions, live music events and in books.’ A colourful place in which to dream’ is a collection of collage and drawings developed in response to Portmeirion and Plas Brondanw and was born of her strong feeling of belonging and creative connection when visiting Clough Williams - Ellis estate.

You can see a full catalogue and price list, and instructions how to buy the work if you are unable to visit Plas Brondanw here

Brondanw Young Open Exhibition 2025
Space

18/01/2025 – 16/02/2025

We have had a better response than ever to our call for work from people under the age of 18, with ambitious 3D works and elegant, imaginative pictures. Special thanks to the schools that have taken part, including all their pupils in colourful and energetic projects.

Philippa Jacobs: Skies and Skylines

26/10/2024 – 12/01-2025
I live 1000 ft above the Dee Valley on the edge of the Berwyn Moors so the space and the expanse of the sky is constantly changing and a stimulus for studying the drama of the horizon meeting the Troposphere. The raised hills and valleys of the Berwyn heathland are punctuated by the dark blocks of the forestry and speckled with dots of sheep. As the clouds arc and disappear over the horizon you receive a real sense of the globe of our Earth in space.

When I look out of my studio window I see the far side of the Dee Valley and below the bend in the River Dee with morning mists drifting upwards across the fields and woodland. While in the evening the sun sets in the west plunging the hills in luminous darkness. In winter the hills are high enough to be clad in snow giving an eerie light in the early morning.

But the sea has always been a draw for me to study the light on the water as it meets the sky and the clouds casting shadows over the beach at low tide with pools of water sparkling with diamonds of light.

Ruth Jên: Seeds of the Imagination

26/10/2024 – 12/01-2025
As I grew up in a close-knit rural community, I was instilled from my childhood in a tradition that valued telling a story, be it a factual story or an imaginary story and as an artist I see the images I create as a continuation of this- but through a visual medium rather than the spoken word.

Animals and creatures have an important role in my prints - the half-human and half-animal attributes of the figures give me the opportunity to deal with contemporary issues in a way that is provocative and funny. Although some of the compositions can at times cause discomfort to the viewer, a figure and horns protruding from his or her skull are familiar in a strange way, and recall a visual vocabulary that is ancient in nature.

Living in a rural area the natural world, the language and the traditions of my square mile feed the work and I am keen to use this knowledge to create worlds that arise from the relationship between the truth and the subconscious .

Susan Williams-Ellis
Transformation

Throughout 2024
Each year, we choose a theme for all Plas Brondanw exhibitions, including the work of Susan Williams-Ellis.

This year the theme is 'Transformation' and our collections curator has prepared an exhibition of Susan's work which dates from formative periods in her development as an artist and designer. The exhibition will vary slightly as the year progresses, but the main pieces will be on view in the Drawing Room or the Blue Room throughout the period. This is the first time some of these works have been seen in public. Click below to view the catalog for the exhibition.

Transformation 2024

Eilian Williams
New Work

07/09/2024 – 20/10/2024
The winner of the emerging artist prize 2023 will be showing a selection of new works, including landscape paintings, portraits and 3D work.

Preparing for this exhibition has been a process of slow self-education. It means coming face to face with choices - which path, which method, which medium - and the realization that there is one essential question for the whole, from my point of view anyway, which is what is the purpose of art in a tempestuous world that has many counting goes to her head. I sketch people twice a week, and that is discipline. But in the end, it has to be more than painting colorful pictures to hang on the wall. Artists have been doing that for thousands of years. I have come to the realization that a hard and honest political dimension has to come to the surface from time to time, that someone expresses his point of view, and that can raise a scab on important issues.

Steph Renshaw
Submerge

07/09/2024 – 20/10/2024
Printmaker Steph Renshaw has been exploring the underwater art of Susan Williams-Ellis and uses this as a starting point for her own work.

Submerge is a celebration of the (water-based) natural world and of Susan’s unique and immersive approach to capturing it.

It’s also an exploration of print techniques and printing materials. On display will be prints made using a wide variety of traditional techniques including etching, lino prints and Collagraphs.

Submerge will be the first time Steph showcases her natural handmade paper, created using pondweed harvested from the pond in her garden in Bristol. This fascinating material loses it’s colour in sunlight and therefore will change over the duration of the exhibition.

Susan King - Threads
13/07/2024 - 01/09/2024

Susan King has been spending time with antique African textiles, studying the patterning, the texture and the colours that they contain. This this has inspired her to create a body of work that engages in a dialogue between the woven, the printed and the painted.

The aim is for the play of ideas to develop without specific purpose, allowing for spontaneity and expressivity, moving one process into another on a journey of elements.

The exhibition will display a series of woven and printed wall hangings, painted canvas and framed works.

John Rowlands - Jazz
13/07/2024 - 01/09/2024

John Rowlands improvises, playing with the relationship between pure music and abstract visual art - with a hint of the pictorial in his use of keyboard patterns.

Pantomime / Behind The Mask - Wanda and David Garner
11/05/2024 – 07/07/2024

Drawing inspiration from the ninteenth century illustrations of Pollock's toy theatres, Susan Williams-Ellis created a series of ceramics entitled ‘Pantomime Characters' which were made by Portmeirion potteries in the nineteen sixties and seventies.

These illustrations acted as a springboard for Wanda and David and took them on a journey from early pantomime to a more serious consideration of the masks we all wear.

The final exhibition will be an engaging experience for all ages. More information

Open 2024 - Transformation
09/03/2024 – 05/05/2024

The theme of this year's Open exhibition is 'Transformation', and the work of almost a hundred different artists can be seen in the show, each of whom has responded to the theme in their own unique way. There are nightmarish scenes, peaceful landscapes, self portraits, sculptures, narrative work, abstract work, figurative work. The themes covered include the environment, personal development, dreams, nightmares, violence, war, life cycles, the beauty of nature and the flexibility of materials. There are no words that can describe the incredible variety and talent that is on display here, you have to come here and see!. Find out more

Young Open Exhibition 2023 - Airborne
25/11/2023 – 17/02/2024

The Brondanw Youg Open exhibition is open to children and young people under 18.

Find out more

Sifting and Combing - Christine Mills and Siw Thomas
23/09/2023 – 11/11/2023

Christine Mills and Siw Thomas are artists in residence at Plas Brondanw this summer 2023. They are working together to explore the Williams-Ellis archives with a particular focus on the ideas and work of Amabel Williams-Ellis, the Croesor valley and its people. Public workshops are integral to their research and will inform the work they produce.

The residency will be inspiration for an exhibition of their work at Plas Brondanw in September 2023.

Wetland Dreams - Manon Awst
15/07/2023 - 16/09/2023

This exhibition by Manon Awst combines sculptures, installations and creative research on the peat fens of Anglesey and Traeth Mawr, the former tidal estuary that lies before Plas Brondanw.

Find out more

Patterns from Nature - Thérèse Durrant
14/05/2023 – 09/07/2023

Thérèse’s work tries to bring the outside in, evoking a feeling of freedom and a soothing connection with the natural world. Her fondness for repetitive motifs and patterns is a form of mindfulness practice, and the work she produces would lend itself to fabric or interior design.

She paints using watercolour, inks and acrylics, and uses a wide range of mark-making materials to create mixed media art, sometimes incorporating collage, printing, textiles, hand and machine stitching.

Landmarks II - Philippa Anderson
14/05/2023 – 09/07/2023

Implied abstract imagery reveals conflict between beauty and dereliction. Classical romanticism and postmodernism combine with clashing qualities of drawing and painting. Images develop through series of intuitive acts, repeated application of thin films of ink, paint and drawing materials give depth to this personal painterly language. Layers are often removed by scrubbing or scraping, revealing a palimpsest of faded marks and former painterly decisions, exposing the underbelly, vulnerable and tender.

For the purpose of this exhibition at Plas Brondanw some works on show will be created in direct reference to the fire which struck the house in 1951. Other works on display will reflect the theme of dereliction and decay of imagined places. By employing her own unique palette and processes to both sets of work Philippa aims to produce a body of work which displays a cohesive narrative throughout the exhibition.

Open 2023
11/03/2023 – 07/05/2023

The theme for this year’s Open is ‘Airbourne’ and our collections curator will be selecting works from the permanent collection to show alongside the contemporary works on display.

Sian Hughes
September – November 2022

Fragments in Time: Flow emerged from an Arts Council of Wales Research and Development grant in 2019 which Sian Hughes used to explore the hinterland of Traeth Mawr, Porthmadog, when it was a tidal estuary, before the Cob was built, and the River Dwyryd’s role in bringing slate to the sea. In this installation the themes of flow, islands and crossing points, are expressed through porcelain and latex. Marks from the landscape, embedded in their delicate translucent properties, are brought alive through lighting to invite a re-viewing of the familiar.

Still Life - Menna Angharad

April - July 2022

Menna Angharad studied Botany before training at Byam Shaw School of Art in London, and gaining an MA in Fine Art from Cardiff University. Painting landscapes and still life works in oil on linen canvas, she works directly from life, creating subtly beautiful images that celebrate the precious and intriguing nature of everyday objects.