Archive

BEEP2014 ARTISTS

Jacqueline Alkema | Tom Banks | Hannah Blight Anderson

Janet Brown Andrew Butler | Ije Amanda Carr | Jason Cartwright  Barry Charlton | Joss Cole | Richard Cox | Barrie J Davies

David Rees Davies | Cornelius Delaney | Shaun Featherstone  Yvonne Yiwen Feng | Clare Harding | Marc Heaton

Bernard Heslin | Jill Iliffe | Shelley Irish  Jacqueline Jones

Sally Jones | Priscilia Kheng | Ankur Kumar | Tim Le Breuilly Scott Mackenzie | Victoria Malcolm | Enzo Marra | Eilish McCann  Richard Monahan | Anne Moses | Ruth Murray | Aiden Myers

Paul Newman | Tom Pitt | Adam Rees | Andre Stitt

Annie Suganami | Michael Szpakowski | Kate Walters

Kay Bainbridge Wilkinson | Lee Williams | Nicola Williams

Steve Wright

BEEP2014 JUDGES

The Beep2014 judges were Iwan Bala and Ruth Cayford.

​Read more about them in the exhibitor’s catalogue (above).

Beep (Biennial exhibition of painting) is Wales’ only large scale contemporary international painting exhibition, bringing painting out of traditional gallery spaces and into unused retail spaces in Swansea City centre.)

Following on from Beep2012: Through Tomorrows Eyes, Beep2014’s theme was ‘A Portrait of the Artist as…’ and featured the work of 48 artists from around the globe. There were over 200 submissions to the exhibition; the artists were asked to veer away from traditional portraiture and explore how they see themselves as an artist or what events or places made them the person they are today… fact or fiction, it was up to them. The exhibitors were chosen by celebrated Welsh artist and writer Iwan Bala and Ruth Cayford the Visual Arts manager for Cardiff County Council.

Two Swansea art galleries provide the awards; elysium gallery sponsored the Main Prize whilst Mission Gallery provided the People’s Choice and also managed the Beep2014 Children’s Painting Prize – which ran at the same time as the main exhibition. There were also various workshops and artist activities throughout the show.

Beep2014 formed part of Wales’ Dylan Thomas 100th Birthday Celebrations and the exhibition took place in the sprawling former Iceland supermarket on Swansea High Street. The building was recently purchased and renovated by Coastal Housing Group as part of its strategy for the regeneration of High Street and is set to become a new artistic hub for the community.

Artists from around the world are looking forward to taking participation in beep 2014. This year we received a large number of applications, around 200, but only 48 artists are selected to present their work. Joins us on this amazing journey through the eyes of talented people and experience their passion for art.

beep2012: Through Tomorrow’s Eyes

Elysium Gallery continued with its series of off-site events before moving to

its new premises on College Street in 2013 by launching the first ever

Beep: Wales International Painting Prize. The exhibition took place in the large Volcano Theatre arts space on Swansea High Street and encouraged submissions from artists’ that celebrated contemporary painting on a grand scale.

The chosen theme was Through Tomorrow’s Eyes and featured over 40 national and international artists. Curated by Elysium Gallery director and artist

Jonathan Powell and judged by artists’ Catrin Webster, Neale Howells and Rob Newell, the exhibition imagined scenarios for our world and its peoples set in Utopian and Dystopian futures.

Utopia gives the human race scope for imagining, inventing and reinventing possible futures and new worlds. Is our idyllic Avalon a city-less world where widely spaced earth-sheltered towns offer sweeping views over the green plains, valleys and mountains? Where high-speed air trains link the communities, cycle ways dominate the human landscape, non-polluting solar and wind generated power fuels all vehicles, all food is fresh and home-grown and everything is reused and recycled?

Or do our futures lie in the sprawling Dystopian cities spreading their tentacles across the globe in the form of highways feeding the city; humanity is exhausting the Earth’s raw materials by which it is sustained, is it thus drawing the rest of the planet into its inevitable apocalyptic end? One argument is that the future of the human race lies in its genesis – with a vital need to reconnect with nature and follow a more spiritual path. For this to happen, do we need to break away from the materialistic constraints of the city – its tendency to coerce the mass into subjugation and dependency – rendering them unable to survive outside of it?

The first Beep: Wales International Painting Prize enabled us to look

Through Tomorrow’s Eyes to shed light on some of this.