Agor-Opening - Resident Artists

Chris Bird-Jones

Fascinated by the phenomenal nuances of refracted light and shadow and how this affects our perception of the world Chris attempts to harness this playful transience, amplified by natural sunlight, working with reflection, to create work, portals to an understanding of what it is to be human.

Recent work has evolved from visiting and revisiting places that inspire, reconnecting anew with ideas and inspiration, dynamic interactive ‘ways of being’ that exist in three layers - identity, awareness, and navigation, and in three dimensions - ways of feeling, ways of relating to others, and ways of doing.

Ideas emerge through daily walking, play, drawing, photography, and film plus experimentation with materials, making, and encounters of all kinds.

Beate Gegenwart

Questions relating to place, location, and by extension dislocation and movement, are a continuous focus in Beate Gegenwart’s work. She is interested in identity, belonging, people, and the spaces between them. Her materials – vitreous enamel on steel, etched copper or brass as well as works on paper – bring to life meditations on borders and boundaries, crossings, rhythms, and water.

Language too occupies an important part in her work, the idea of the ‘translator’ and the use of the ‘mother tongue’ as orientation, home, and dwelling rather than physical location. Being originally from Germany and now living and working in Wales for most of her adult life, she learned Welsh, speaks English, German and French.

Gegenwart’s primary material is metal and she works mostly with vitreous enamels (glass) on steel, further developed by drawing, mark-making, abrading.

Her most recent work investigates fine etching and photo-etching. The surfaces are then delicately textured and brushed before using a variety of surface techniques, such as the patination of metals, brush plating, and the use of pigments amongst others.

Catrin Grosse

During the years before the lockdown, I have been actively working with other people organizing projects and workshops. My artwork is figurative and explores relationships with the rhythm of life through drawing, printmaking and hand-building in clay that leads to cast pieces in bronze.

The isolation since 2020 made me ask more questions about opportunities for digital collaboration with colleagues (and customers).

Because I am very excited to get to know more about Wales and the artists there it seems to be a very good chance to share the knowledge about working methods and to join possible artistic ways to react to this situation.

This project, Agor, is a challenge for me communicating in a group to walk in this new direction.

Iris Stöber

Currently, I’m concerned with the issue of ‘still lives’, with objects and contrasting materials, mainly in wood and plastic. We have a group in Berlin-Brandenburg and we are investigating ‘Still Lives’ in the context of Corona.

I like to assemble, to connect, to joint things. Ensembles/assemblages, that are intended to encourage smile rather than feel grave. Smile but also pensiveness and contemplation, if there is any. If not, then it could be nonsense. I like to surprise and to put things together which contradict and contrast.

Frequently I work with issues or titles, mainly in series. My practice is predominantly object and form-based, but there are also space-related works.

My basic principles are mostly drawing with lead pencil, recently with glass and watercolour pens. I join complementary colours. Issues are structures and signs, I form pictograms, that flow into a silkscreen. I am influenced by poetry, sometimes I create anagrams to find out, what hides behind a word or a sentence. Often there is photography in the background as inspiration and in the past, I was also engaged in diverse media, such as video and computer-based animation.