Cardiff Revisited

The Albany Gallery is showcasing well known scenes, locations and buildings that feature in and around the city of Cardiff and its surrounding areas, by selected gallery artists.

View the complete exhibition here.

Think magical places – such as Castle Coch and street scenes such as Old Post Box that we all know and love and likely see on a regular basis; as we go about our ever-more hectic lives. Yet, do we really ‘see’ these landmarks, caught in stolen moments of time? Or, are we just too busy?

How well does the increasing urbanisation of the city of Cardiff live alongside nature? Is the hidden wildness of the natural world reclaiming the streets?

Two of the artists taking part certainly like to think so.

“I tell narratives through murals and stories via animals featured in my work,” says Emma Connolly. An award winning artist, hailing from County Wicklow.

Under the wing of Lady Dufferin (who herself exhibited as an artist, under going by the name Lindy Guiness); Connolly’s work went on to win multiple awards and soon she was living the rare life of a successful fine art painter. Yet she experienced an epiphany of sorts – that told her to study education and teaching in Wales – despite her fruitful career. Connolly is currently the Artist in Residence at Howells Girls School in Llandaff.

Aiming to stay for only one year, Connolly met her husband in Cardiff and has settled (for now) in the city. “London is next,” says Connolly “… though I’m not sure how I’ll get there…” We have every faith she will go on to smash it in London, as she has here in Wales and Ireland before.

Tom Gowen, a first time exhibitor at the gallery, has the all-seeing eye of the artist who can spot the small exquisite details of the natural world that is all around us – even in our most built up areas. “It’s something that I return to time and time again,” says Tom, “the reclaiming of the streets by nature. How these opposing forces of the natural and native environment and man-made buildings and architecture can co-exist…”

Raised in the Vale of Glamorgan, Gowen has a love for Llantwit Major in particular. “It’s such a pretty place,” he says, “and some of the streets there are being reclaimed by nature…That went on to inform my work in the Cotswolds, where I studied fine art, and also Cardiff and South Wales at large, now that I am based outside of St. Mellons in a semi-rural location.”

This nature reclaiming the streets theme is easy to see in his ‘Old Post Box’ work, depicting a Roath street scene that many of us will know and love. “We can see worlds of nature in only the cracks in a wall,” says Gowen.

Like his contemporary, Connolly, he is a multi-award winning artist – most recently coming full circle when he won first place at the Open Art Fair, in Cowbridge, Vale of Glamorgan. “That was so rewarding,” says Gowen. “My work depicted Penarth Pier; and to win first prize at the OAF in Cowbridge was a real joy.”

The full list of exhibiting artists is impressive:

Steve Alport, Alex Brown, Peter brown NEAC, Emma Connolly, Tony Douglas-Jones, Tom Gowen, Adrian Green, David Griffiths RCA, Andrew Hood, Stephen Kite, David Knight, Euan McGregor PAI, Roma Mountjoy, Malcolm Murphy, Janette Roberts, Paul Weston.

So go take a mindful moment and see Cardiff landmarks as you have perhaps not seen them before. Your perspective will change – and certainly, you will feel happier than when you walked in.

Meryl Cubley February 2025