The show included the winning painting, by Hastings-based painter Tom Banks, plus work by the 49 shortlisted artists.

The winner was announced on August 5 in Swansea when the exhibition went on show at Swansea College of Art Dynevor Campus. Banks will receive £1000 and a solo show at elysiumgallery in Swansea.

Visitors to the exhibition at Undegun got the chance to vote for another award: the People’s Prize. After hundreds of votes the winner received £200.

The biennial Beep International Painting Prize is open to artists from all over the world at any stage in their careers. The 50 finalists were selected by BEEP International Painting Prize founder Jonathan Powell, and the overall winner was chosen by Jonathan Watkins, a highly respected curator and director of Ikon Gallery in Birmingham.

“The quality of the entrants was very high,” he said. “In judging the prize I was looking for work that was not derivative, work that was unpretentious and that demonstrated virtuosity.”

BEEP founder Jonathan Powell agreed that the quality of work submitted for this year’s prize is outstanding.

“We’ve had an overwhelming response. This year has seen a huge surge of interest with extremely high quality entries from artists from all over the world. It is a superb show.” 

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An exhibition by Jenny Hall

Undegun – Regent Street – Wrexham

Wrexham’s creative space Undegun will be welcoming Hollow, by Machynlleth based Artist Jenny Hall, which will delve into new territory for the pop up arts centre, creating a space-within-a-space as a large architectural structure is given form by the artist. The exhibition also challenges the public to experiment with building their own structures from the blocks.

Taking a copper mine as a source of inspiration, this exhibition explores the creative destruction involved in the act of construction. The mine was represented as a large hollow sculpture at the Aberystwyth Arts Centre where loose cardboard boxes represented the ‘ore’ that had been extracted from inside. As the touring exhibition also explores displacement: of an idea, of a material, Hollow has been re-imagined for Undegun in a new form. Cardboard boxes are the perfect material for expressing a thing displaced. These connect together with magnets.

Jenny invited award winning Welsh architecture practice Rural Office for Architecture to create a design using her building block system for Undegun. Their exploded spherical form lends itself to the arts centre’s program of music and dance performance.

Hollow will also be re-imagined when it travels to the Muni centre in Pontypridd. Constructed on a large mirrored floor, it encourages visitors to consider the relationship between the spaces we create above and below the ground.

“Mines have faded in our minds as we no longer reach for the coal scuttle or travel by steam engine, but we continue to rapidly build a world on the surface of the same size if not the same shape as the subterranean world that we excavate.”

The public are invited to move, stack, connect and build with the loose boxes and the scale model to explore building structures and creating empty space.

Jenny is the director of architectural design practice craftedspace.co.uk

‘Hollow’ will be on display to the public from Saturday, 21^st May, and there will be a programme of events and performances during the run of the exhibition providing a chance to meet the artist and Architect Niall Maxwell of Rural office for Architecture to discuss how structures are created and how people identify with and use these spaces.

Opening Hours for Undegun Art Space are Wednesday to Saturday, 12pm to 4pm.

Enquiries: Please email contact@thisproject.co.uk / 01978 345220

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Her latest show ‘Beauty Marks’, held at Montys on Brick lane at the end of 2015 was her first independent London exhibit. Her latest experiments conjured up bodies from calligraphy like swipes of a fat, chisel tipped permanent marker. All artworks were drawn under her own steam—which is to say, drawn from her own liveliness, celebrating the movement of bodies through bold strokes of marker. Inspired by motion, music and the beauty in our contours. Her unique style dictating the jutting of limbs, jaws and hips as silhouettes, marks and lines, achieve character born of the artists intuition. These spirits enhanced by brilliant flashes of azure, and gold threading through the scene, demonstrating the energy of the human form.

For Focus Wales, Stedhead will be including her Beauty Marks Exhibition, as well as some brand new pieces.

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Working across a range of approaches, including film, installation, animation, interventions in the landscape, drawing, painting and sculpture, they present something of a flow of ideas between the cultural and artistic foci of Undegun in Wrexham and The Creative Network, at Arts Alive Wales in the Black Mountains.

Nonarchy will be Undeguns second exhibition of the year, and will be looking at how these nine artists react and respond to the creative spaces of Undegun. After visiting the Wrexham based art space in September 2015 the group of artists from Brecon Beacons were inspired in numerous ways and from that point went off to create a body of work to be exhibited from Friday 1st April 2016.

The building, on Wrexham’s main shopping thoroughfare, Regent Street, has a rich and colourful history, which the artists will explore.  From the building’s opening in the late 19^th Century as the Maelor Hotel associated with the temperance movement, then later becoming Astons furniture store 1970s, then turning into the towns JJB Sports shop which closed down only four years ago when the company went into administration. Since then the building has been transformed into the amazing pop-up arts centre – Undegun – featuring an exhibition and event space, with 20 artist studios on site.  But despite the changes, all around Undegun are reminders of its history, from the Adidas sign above the entrance to the original 70’s floral theme wallpaper in the old hotel rooms on the second floor.

Part of the excitement of this collaborative venture arises from the diversity of approaches of the artists. The challenge consists in responding to the venue itself, creating new work, or re-exploring established work in relation to the site and to the developing responses of the other artists.

Susan Adams

Morag Colquhoun

Justine Cook

Penny Hallas

Richard Harris

Jamie Lake

Chris Nurse

Tessa Waite

Philip Watkins

Opening event: 1st April 2016, 7:00pm to 9:00pm

Closing event: 30th April 2016, 2:00pm to 4:00pm

See www.thisproject.co.uk for more details

Undegun

11 Regent Street

Wrexham

LL1 1SG

Wednesday – Saturday 12-4pm

The show is supported by Brecknock Arts Trust and The Creative Network

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Zaru ‘Zhubat’ Jonson!

Our (in)famous open mic kicks off at 7pm with a host of the best Spoken Word, Musicians, Comedians and more!

As always it’s £3 on the door with our picnic buffet at Un Deg Un. 8th February 2016

Zaru Jonson has been performing words regularly since being awarded the second place and audience vote prizes at Literature Wales’ John Tripp Award for Spoken Poetry, 2009. Under various names, he has since read at the Edinburgh Free Fringe, Dinefwr Literature Festival, Cheltenham Poetry Festival, and two or three hundred-odd other open mics, exhibition openings, protests, hip-hop nights and miscellaneous events, often clustered around Cardiff. During 2014, he took part in the ‘Dylan Live / Dylan ar Daith’ tour in celebration of Dylan Thomas’ centenary, playing at eight universities around Wales, the Dylan In Fitzrovia Festival in London, and the PEN International Literature Festival in New York City (alongside Mr Phormula, Martin Daws and Professor Daniel Williams.)

Zaru likes dogs, believes in a god, and is incurably sincere. Recently he returned from Canada, where he avoided everything and picked hazelnuts.

Original link to post: https://voiceboxwxm.wordpress.com/voicebox-nights/

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Click picture to view slideshow

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This September Undegun will be showcasing work from a large group of artists taking part in Wales’ biggest Open Studios art trail, Helfa Gelf 2015. Now in its 10th year, this free annual event is spread right across North Wales with studios taking part in Gwynedd, Conwy, Flintshire, Denbighshire and Wrexham. It presents a unique chance for visitors to peek behind the scenes, experience this normally hidden world and get to chat to the artists and crafts people about their creative process and their studio spaces. Helfa Gelf mentions:
“We think North Wales is an overlooked gem for the visual arts and crafts in Wales, with loads of artists and makers beavering away up mountain tracks and sea-side cul-de-sacs.”

Like THIS Project who run the gallery, Helfa Gelf aims to encourage engagement & collaboration and break down barriers between artists and the public. This is the third consecutive year the two organisations have collaborated on an exhibition at Undegun.
‘Open Doors’ brings together over 30 artists and begins with a public launch on Saturday the 5th September at 7pm. The Exhibition will be on display until the 26th September. During their time at Undegun the exhibiting artists will be using the art space to create new work live in front of the public, with opportunities for everyone to get involved in workshop activities and learn new skills.

During its time at Undegun the exhibition will feature a number of free workshops and talks, which are open to all abilities.
On the 25th September artist Graham Mitchell and Ros Hornbuckle will be demonstrating their skills of tapestry weaving and jewellery making out of wood at Undegun from 11 to 4pm. All are welcome to come down to the venue and discuss with the artists more about their disciplines and how they find the creative scene within the North of Wales
You will receive a warm welcome from the artists wherever they are, and will join the ever-growing number of art enthusiasts who enjoy this yearly event – and remember, it’s all free.

Helfa Gelf /Art Trail runs every Friday, Saturday and Sunday in September in Gwynedd, Conwy, Denbighshire, Flintshire and Wrexham. Studios are open from 11am-5pm daily.

For the ‘Open Doors’ exhibition Undegun is open to the public from 12 – 4 on Wednesdays and 11 – 4 on Thursdays, Fridays & Saturdays.

If you have any interest in become a part of Helfa Gelf please feel free to visit http://www.helfagelf.co.uk/en/contact/ or any questions about Undegun please feel free to send an email to contact@thisproject.co.uk

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Dates of Exhibition:
LAUNCH: Thursday, 30th July – 7:00PM TO 9PM
ENDS:Saturday, 29th August
The volunteer run gallery is open to the public weekly on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday from 12pm until 4pm.

International Mystery Artists Team Up For Wrexham Exhibition
The exploits of Banksy and other worldwide street artists have thrust the concept of hidden identities, pseudonyms and secret exhibitions into the public domain, but this idea has been present in the art world for many years. For many artists keeping their identity concealed is a strong element of what they do, and allow the public to look at the work they produce without any preconceptions.

The A5 Collective is one example of this shadowy practice, with many critics claiming that the group may not even exist!

But Wrexham based THIS Project have teamed up with curator Robert Stephen to host a unique exhibition which will, for the first time ever, show examples of work from all seven of the artists in one show. The purpose of the exhibition is to throw the light into the darkest corners of the art world and to question the celebrity culture that goes hand-in-hand with being a famous artist.

The A5 group are a group of artists based in the United Kingdom and America. The artists are (in alphabetical order):
Deceased landscape artist Ben D Gedig (real name Robert Lloyd Jones), whose work was discovered and is now presented by his grandson Robert John Jones; New-York-based digital revolutionary Richard Head (real name!); International Street Artist ‘ONE’; Russian Print luminaries The Ozniak Brothers; Drago Zalaznik who looks at the art of identity; and they will be joined by artist and exhibition curator Robert Stephen himself.

Some members of the group wish to remain anonymous because they believe that the art they produce is more important than the artist. This is a reaction to our contemporary fascination with celebrity and the pursuit of fame and fortune—a world in which individuals are increasingly famous just for being famous.

A5 do not usually give interviews prior to their exhibitions, keeping quiet about precise details and often only utilising social media after the unveiling. Their manifesto talks about how over the past 20 years the increased use of computers has created a paradigm shift in the way art is perceived.

A5 state that;
“We are interested in unfamiliar ways of interacting with different audiences and sharing a conviction that constantly evolving mobile technologies and information dissemination systems necessitate a more connected and accessible art.”

Their manifesto, which appears in full at the bottom of this post, asserts that in this digital age, art needs to become truly immersive and interact more fully with a public outside of the typical gallery habitué—and especially those people who live far from the major cultural centres.

Undegun believe that bringing the A5 group to Wrexham will provide stimulating and exciting challenges for the local art scene, especially in terms of the unconventional way the artists have approached this exhibition.
Undegun has always been known for letting artists take a strong creative role in the curation of their own work with the support of the gallery’s team, but for them this will be taking the gallery experience to an entirely new level.
“Working with a group of artists like the A5 group has meant we’ve had to keep many of the details of the exhibition shrouded in secrecy. We have worked with Robert Stephen, who has acted as a middle-man between ourselves and some of the artists, and we’ve only been able to speak to them through secure channels, in case the press or the authorities are taking an interest in their activities. The challenge has proved worthwhile though, and this really will be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see the work in its current form. We’re very excited to have the opportunity and we hope people will come along to the launch to experience the conundrum of the A5 group for themselves!”

//// Manifesto:

We are a collective of artists, based in the UK and America. Currently we have six members and they are (in alphabetical order):

We provide minimal explanation of our work because there is no correct response to a work of art and the viewer must decide what the work means to them … without reference to a “higher” authority. The viewer must trust their own judgment and no art has an automatic right of privilege based solely upon the perceived reputation of its creator.

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