Penny Hallas

Installation and live screening of Unruly Element, Morgans Arcade, Cardiff.
15 – 17 Oct 2026
Created for tactileBOSCH‘s 25th Anniversary programme, Fist Inside the Velvet Glove.

Unruly Element is an installation comprising projection/moving-image and equine skeletal remains, linking environmental, psychological and mythical forces, channelling ideas of damage and transformation. Deep at the heart of ritual, myth, celebration and mourning, fire invades spaces beyond predictable boundaries. Protean in nature, both a signifier for the comforts of home, domesticity and companionship and a raging destructive force devouring everything in its path.

In 2013 Kim Fielding sent out photos of the destruction by fire of the Old Laundry, former home of tactileBOSCH. I’ve combined his images with footage of fires witnessed in-and-around Llangatwg, Powys and (referencing the Chinese Year of the Horse) the semi-wild ponies that live and die on the mynydd, whose skeletal remains can be found in the grass. Horribly, since planning this work in Spring, fires have swept the land.

Image: still from 26 minute moving image for durational installation/performance.
Full details of event and access click here

New works included in Coed Coexist, Plas Glyn-Y-Weddw, Llanbedrog, Gwynedd, LL53 7TT

16 May Opening event with free activities throughout the day – all welcome
16 May – 12 July Exhibition continues.

Initiated by Plas Glyn-y-Weddw in partnership with Pen Llyn artists Junko Mori  & John Egan, the project reflects on the vital role of trees and woodlands and our connections to and responsibilities for these ecosystems.

image: still from Beech Wood Pieces. Performance to camera. 16:9 duration 20:00
A gift of charcoal made from a fallen Beech tree on Pen Llyn prompted me to re-explore the native beech woods at Cwm Clydach National Nature Reserve near my home and studio. These are some of the most Westerly native beechwoods in the UK and formerly a source of charcoal that fueled the early Industrial Revolution. This led to the beechwoods being ravaged by successive industrial activities and associated systems including ironworks, limestone quarries and kilns, electricity pylons, tramway, railway, micro-hydro installation and dual carriageway.

New drawings in Concentric 10, West Wharf Gallery Cardiff CF10 5DB

9 May 2-4pm – opening event
9 May to 22 June. Exhibition continues. Open Thursday-Saturday, 10am-5pm

With Jacqueline Alkema, Adéolá Dewis, Kay Keogh, Elinor Staniforth, Temmah, Patricia Ziad

image: Storm Operatives (2025)

Saturday 14 March 2-4pm. Elysium Gallery, 210 High Street, Swansea SA1 1PE. Free – all welcome 

Join us for experimental improvisational live performance, bringing new perspectives to the current Sighting exhibition at Elysium Gallery. Expect sound, movement, spoken word, ritual, projection, piercing and disruption…

With: @vrosssmith @tim_mrtn_jones @iona.moves @or.rob @xavybabyyyy @beth.greenhalgh.11 @hollyslingsby @niapolly @tesswoof @waitetessa @pennyhallas

Supported by:
@celfcymruarts
@axisweb
@elysiumswansea
@sgor_score
#nationallottery

Sighting and ReSighting. 6th February to 28th March / 6 Chwefror i 28 Mawrth

ReSighting is running alongside the Sighting exhibition at Elysium Gallery, opening up the exhibition in new ways with additional workshops, events, live performance, resources, mentoring. The aim is to extend sharing and learning around the exhibition theme: the complex nature of our perception and experience of place.

Thanks to support from Arts Council of Wales, Axis Web, Sgôr Performance Collective, Elysium Gallery

Mae ReSighting yn rhedeg ochr yn ochr ag arddangosfa Sighting yn Oriel Elysium, gan agor yr arddangosfa mewn ffyrdd newydd gyda gweithdai ychwanegol, digwyddiadau, perfformiad byw, adnoddau, mentora. Y nod yw ehangu rhannu a dysgu o amgylch thema’r arddangosfa: natur gymhleth ein canfyddiad a’n profiad o le.

Diolch i gefnogaeth gan Gyngor Celfyddydau Cymru, Axis Web, Sgôr Performance Collective, Oriel Elysium

@celfcymruarts
@axisweb
@elysiumswansea
@sgor_score
#nationallottery

Elysium Gallery, 210 High Street, Swansea SA1 1PE.
Opening event 6 Feb, 7pm. All welcome.
Exhibition continues to 28th March, Weds – Sat 11-6pm

17 Feb 7pm Online artist talk: Tuesday 17th February, 7pm
21 Feb 2pm Gallery talk: Deep Time, with Alan Bowring, Geologist and Fforest Fawr Geopark Development Officer.

In ‘Sighting’, Penny Hallas explores the complex nature of our perception and experience of place. A sighting can be something that simply happens to us, punching through our inattention, dismantling our expectations, or it can be a deliberate act of focusing in. Using but subverting traditional techniques and formats, such as the myriorama, along with home-made, idiosyncratic viewing devices, Penny examines the mechanisms by which we attempt to make sense of the world and to situate ourselves within it. How does a space, in the shape, for instance, of a building, an institution, a landscape, become personal, ‘meaningful’? What do we bring to it and what happens in us when the meanings are usurped or when such places are threatened, damaged or made unavailable? All of which raises social and political questions about power, access and control, and the impact of changing attitudes on social relationships, land and environment but it touches deeply too on our most intimate psychological responses. More ludic than documentary, Penny brings a spirit of play, fantasy, improvisation and mischief to her enquiries, arriving often in the most unexpected places, by means of entirely unexpected paths.

Designed and hand-bound by guest editor Frances Woodley. 19 artists made 20 pages: each artist gets a copy of the finished book, with the last going to Bodleian Library, University of Oxford.

Frances’s theme was the prefix ‘Re-’ when used in front of a verb. See her Instagram for more details.

For all 20 of my pages see artwork

With Sgôr at Swansea Performance Weekend 20th November.
Glynn Vivian Art Gallery, 15.30 – 20.00. See poster for details of all events.
@lindersterling
@vrosssmith
@hollyslingsby
@Glynnvivian
@swanseaperformance
@sgor_score

photos (top): Dafydd Williams (below): Pete Evans

A Private Land / Tir Diarffordd has been selected for the ‘Power / Control’ category of the Axis Art Film Festival.
10 Sept, from 7pm

The Film Festival runs from 8-14 September 2025 with seven themed events, showing over 30 short films by artists from across the UK and beyond. Book your place for all the online screenings and events here

A six week summer residency at G39 with SGÔR performance collective culminates in free live performance events.
9 Aug 5-8pm MOSH part 1, G39 Cardiff
21 Aug 6-8pm MOSH part 2, Ffotogallery, Cardiff

SGÔR residency / performers: Beth Greenhalgh, Tess Woof, Tim Martin-Jones, Vivian Ross-Smith, Tessa Waite, Penny Hallas, Abi Hubbard, Robert Oros, Iona Lewis, Pete Evans plus special guests.

For more info see @tactileBosh
Pete Evans