Happy New Year everyone!

Dear all,

we hope everyone who was celebrating had a nice Christmas and enjoyed the holiday break. We'd like to wish you a happy new year 2017, and considering how difficult 2016 was for many people, let's hope this one's better, more peaceful and creative. Good luck with all your projects and endeavours! 

We'll be back in January with news about our new projects.

Take care,
Zosia and Dafydd

new show opening in January

Afternoon everyone,

We'd just like to let you know that we'll be opening a new exhibition in Brynmawr's Market Hall Cinema soon after New Year. This time it'll be a solo show by Bulgarian photographer based in Berlin, Stanka Koleva. "I let myself be bird" was our final show in the Hanbury Road Gallery in Bargoed last spring and we're very happy to be able to bring it to the audience in another valley.

We'll set the dates as soon as the cinema reopens after the ongoing renovation work. 

"summer passage" by Stéphane Vendran 2.12 - 12.1 + new show coming up!

Morning everyone,

here's to let you know that Stéphane Vendran's exhibition "summer passage" in now up and running in New Tredegar's White Rose Information and Resource Centre! You can visit it 5 days a week during the Centre's opening hours, which you can find on their website. Make sure you come and see Stéphane's beautiful travel images if you can!

And here are a few shots from Thursday's installation:

PS We also have some more exhibition news coming up, with Stanka Koleva's show "I let myself be bird" opening in Wales's oldest cinema - Market Hall Cinema in Brynmawr - as soon as it reopens after the ongoing renovation work.

More information very soon!

"summer passage" opens on the 2nd of December

Morning all,

Just a quick update on our new exhibition "summer passage" by Stéphane Vendran - the prints arrived last week and now they're all mounted and ready to hang. 

You can see and read more about Stéphane's work on his page.

The exhibition will open at the White Rose Information and Resource Centre in New Tredegar on the 2nd of December. You can check their website for specific opening hours, but the centre is open Monday - Friday.

"summer passage" opens this Friday 2nd December

White Rose Information & Resource Centre 

(New Tredegar Library)

Elliots Town 

New Tredegar 

NP24 6EF

"summer passage" by Stéphane Vendran

dates and more information coming soon!

meanwhile, check out Stéphane's page

new exhibition coming up!

Afternoon everyone,


We're happy to let you know we have a new exhibition coming up!

This time, working with the White Rose Information and Resource Centre in New Tredegar, we've decided to disperse the November sadness with a selection of summer images by French artist based in Montélimar, Stéphane Vendran. 

Stéphane is a film photographer who works with Polaroid, toy cameras, such as Holga and Diana, wet plate  collodion and other analogue techniques. He is also a graphic designer and a co-organiser of Montélimar's edition of Expolaroid festival of Polaroid and instant photography.

As part of the exhibition, we'll be showing Holga and Polaroid photographs from Stéphane's series Complètement à l'Est, taken on Stéphane's journey across Italy, Slovenia, Croatia, Hungary, Romania, the Czech Republic, Austria and Germany, as well as his travel images from France and Sardinia. 

We'll have more updates soon about the exhibition dates and opening times - stay tuned!!

upcoming projects and small feature

Morning everyone!

We're still putting the finish plans on some bigger projects for this year, but in the meantime we wanted to let you know what else we're up to at the moment and what we have planned for the near future.

First up, we're preparing an exhibition for the White Rose Information & Resource Centre in New Tredegar, which we hope to open towards the end of this month, along with some other exhibitions we hope to get set up in more rural areas in Caerphilly.

We've also been plotting with the Market Hall Cinema to bring another exhibition to Brynmawr before Christmas. 

And finally, we just wanted to share with you some images taken or created by the artists we've hosted in the past, because as you know they don't stop creating once they've been exhibited! - so here are a couple of new images by French photographer and printer Charles Guerin.

original lith prints by Charles Guerin

October updates

Afternoon everyone,

while we're away and preparing projects for the next few months, we'd like to spread the news about interesting exhibitions and events that we've spotted happening here and there!

First of all, if you're in Cardiff this week you should make sure not to miss the wonderful Made in Roath festival, a week full of art, performance, exhibitions and other great happenings. 

Meanwhile, The Black Crows of Borth, an exhibition by Swiss photographer Mira Andres is opening in Swansea's Elysium Gallery, presenting her images of the female community in West Wales's seaside town of Borth.

London's Photographer's Gallery show of 1970s feminist avant-garde artists sounds like a show not to miss, and if you happen to visit Naples this autumn there's a great retrospective of Mimmo Jodice, a reportage and fine art photographer who has not been exhibited in his home town before - still on till the 26th of October.

Let us know if you know of any interesting exhibitions in your area, we'll be back soon with project updates. 

Project Updates and Clarifications

Dear All,

It's been a while since you heard from us, but we want to reassure you that we are still around and still working on new projects.

After closing the gallery in Bargoed we've been taking a break to catch up on some sleep and to work on some new ideas for the future. We are hoping to run another gallery project in Pontypool next year in cooperation with the Torfaen Arts Development department, along with some other exhibitions we are planning to host in other parts of the Valleys.

Unfortunately, due to there still being some confusion, we would like to clarify that despite keeping our name, the gallery in Abertillery that we originally founded is not associated with us or the*kickplate*project in any way. They are completely independent from us and we have not had any input or influence over any exhibitions that have been organised at the space since February 2014. The current management of The Kickplate Gallery are solely responsible for the current content and the way the gallery is run.

We would like to make it clear that the reason we have decided to make this clarification again is because we find the current exhibition to be completely at odds with our philosophy when it comes to depicting women in art.

While they can show whatever they please at the gallery, the fact that they do it using our original name puts us in a position of being seen to be endorsing this type of imagery, so we would like to make it clear that we are not involved in any way in decisions made at the gallery.

Thanks and all the best,

Dafydd & Zosia

the*kickplate*project

the*kickplate*project take a break

Hi everyone,

We just wanted to let you all know that we'll be taking a break and planning our next projects until the 16th of June.

While we're away you can see "partially here" featuring Hanan Kazma in the visitor centre at Parc Cwm Darran, Deri.

we'll be back with more updates soon!

photographs from PhotoRenga workshop with David Sinden

Evening,

we've been a bit busy recently, so it's only now that we're posting the PhotoRengas that we produced along with Kate Woodward, Tom Kirby and David Sinden during a workshop that David ran in our gallery during its last day in Bargoed. PhotoRenga is a kind of visual dialogue between photographers and you can read more about how it works on David's website, where you can also find full-size versions of the photos. Here are the collaborations that came out of our urban exploration of Bargoed:

It's great fun and you should try this at home! 

"partially here" by Hanan Kazma in Parc Cwm Darran

Dear all,

just to let you know we're showing a selection of photographs from Hanan Kazma's exhibition "partially here", which we originally organised in Bargoed last August. Now, thanks to our co-operation with Cwm a Mynydd, Hanan's work is up in the park's visitor centre building and it will be open every day from 10.00 to 16.30 until the middle of June. The visitor centre is situated in Darran Valley (two miles north of Bargoed) where a massive colliery used to be, in an area which has been transformed from an industrial site into a natural reserve.

Here are a few images of the park and the space - putting up the photographs against a blue background and glass walls was an interesting challenge!

"I let myself be bird", wall IV

Evening,


tonight we'd like to show you the last couple of images from Stanka Koleva's exhibition, "I let myself be bird" - our final show in Bargoed.

 

      Some colours may vary from the reality, so visit Stanka's page to have a closer look!

"partially here" in Parc Cwm Darran & "I let myself be bird", walls II and III

Evening everyone,

today we installed a selection of images from Hanan Kazma's exhibition "partially here" in Parc Cwm Darran's visitor centre. It will be on till mid June and it's open every day between 10 and 16.30.

The exhibition was originally shown in our former gallery in Bargoed last August, and now we've brought it to Parc Cwm Darran as part of our co-operation with Cwm a Mynydd, which is part of the EU- and Welsh Assembly Government-funded Rural Development Plan, aiming to improve the quality of life in small rural communities.  

Photos of the exhibition coming soon! 

For now we'd also like to share some more photos of Stanka Koleva's exhibition "I let myself be bird", which was our final show in Bargoed - so here's wall II and III:

(wall II)

(wall III)

Some colours may vary slightly from the reality, so have a look at Stanka's page too!

"I let myself be bird", wall I

Hi everyone,

We'd like to share some images of the walls from our final show at the Hanbury Road Gallery, "I let myself be bird" featuring Stanka Koleva, here on the blog for those who couldn't make it to Bargoed in time...

 

We'll be posting more soon!

We Are Ghosts in Redhouse Cymru

Evening,

here are a few photos of  "We Are Ghosts" by our project's Dafydd Williams in Redhouse Cymru in Merthyr Tydfil, installed for Made in Roath's Red Route March 2016. 

The exhibition is up for this weekend only, so hurry up!

More project updates coming soon