Wales Arts Review Weekly Update (20/05/2023)
Staging Welsh writer Dorothy Edwards, the Wales Arts Review Best of 2023 (so far) playlist and a mixed media exhibition by the artist SLQS at Moma Machynlleth, all in these week's free newsletter.
Staging Dorothy Edwards
Available from tomorrow, in the latest of our exclusive articles for our paid subscribers, Gary Raymond discusses the journey of writing a play about "forgotten" Welsh writer Dorothy Edwards
Up until now, Gary Raymond has been known as a novelist, critic, and broadcaster, but here he explains the journey of his new play, A Beautiful Rhythm and Life and Death, and how he found a way to tell the story of “forgotten” Welsh writer Dorothy Edwards on the stage.
Dorothy Edwards came into my life relatively recently. From the moment I saw her face looking out from that photograph of her in the garden, hands on hips, high cheekbones above pursed lips, the dark eyes of the Welsh, she was immediately a presence who lingered. From far back in the reaches of time, she had an unshakeable contemporaneity to her. In a style that I was to learn was familiar to those who knew her, it was quite an entrance; an explosive mixture of the personality that I found in her biography (she had a fascinating life), of the enigma I found in her work (what is it about those quiet stories?), and it was in the look that I found in the magnetic glare. Once encountered, Dorothy Edwards is not so easily forgotten.
Top Picks
Best Welsh Music of 2023, So Far.. Playlist
As we approach the halfway point in what has been an exciting year for Welsh music, Wales Arts Review releases a playlist of Best Welsh Music of 2023… So far.
Read the full piece, here.
Candy Bedworth takes a look at Roan/m, a mixed media exhibition of screenprints, photographs, textile and film by the artist Sarah Le Quang Sang (SLQS) on show at MOMA Machynlleth.
Read the full review, here.
Rhythmau’r Bryniau/Hill-Rhythms by David Jones
A new exhibition, Rhythmau’r Bryniau/Hill-Rhythms opens this Spring celebrating David Jones, one of the great artist-writers of the twentieth century. A south Powys museum will be holding a major exhibition this summer to celebrate his work.
Read the full review, here.
Video of the Week
This is Video of the Week from Wales Arts Review. We’ll be showcasing some of the best art in Wales with a new video shared every week. From music to drama and everything in between, videos will not be limited by medium. This week we’re featuring ‘Calling’ by alt-pop quartet, Hourglvss.
In case you missed it…
Trezza Azzopardi in Conversation
In the latest of our new long-form interviews with the leading voices of Welsh culture exclusively available to our paid subscribers, we talk to the Booker-nominated novelist about fiction and fable.
Cardiff-born Trezza Azzopardi’s debut novel, The Hiding Place, was nominated for the Booker Prize in 2000 and won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize. Her subsequent three novels have marked her out as one of the finest novelists of her generation. Her Welsh-English-Maltese roots inform her fiction of familial dramas. For many years now, Trezza has taught on the famous Creative Writing course at UEA. Gary Raymond caught up with her for a wide-ranging discussion on the craft of writing, the influences of childhood, and the minefield of teaching students in the age of trigger-warnings.