Dr Durre Shahwar & Rhys Slade-Jones announced as National Lottery Heritage Fund commissioned artists
Ffotogallery are delighted to announce that the two artists for National Lottery Heritage Fund commissions will be Dr Durre Shahwar (Disabled Artists commission) and Rhys Slade-Jones (LQBTQ+ commission).
This commission, made possible by the National Lottery Heritage Fund, will give these two wonderful artists a chance to produce a body of work responding to our archive, it will enable us to create an archive collection that truly represents communities and individuals who are historically underrepresented in archives - the work produced will be acquired into Ffotogallery’s collection.
Chloe Davies, Ffotogallery’s Archive Project Officer, said “These are steps we are taking to ensure our archive collection represents Ffotogallery’s core values and includes and represents all the wonderful people and communities we collaborate and work with on a daily basis. I’m really looking forward to working with Rhys and Durre and excited to see how they interpret our archive and respond to it. At Ffotogallery, we’re proud to be representing these historically underrepresented communities and forming important relationships.“
Dr Durre Shahwar is a writer, researcher, and artist with a PhD in autofiction and Pakistani-Welsh identity from Cardiff University where she is an Associate Tutor. She was the recipient of a Future Wales Fellowship, researching climate justice through art, the visual outcome of which was exhibited at Glynn Vivian Art Gallery. Her film and visual work have also been exhibited and screened widely, including Chapter Arts, Migration Matters Festival, G39, The Turner House Gallery, Green Man Festival, Arts & Heritage.
Durre’s work uses decolonised creative practices to amplify marginalised narratives. She is the co-editor of Gathering: Women of Colour on Nature (404 Ink). In 2022, Durre was highly commended for the Morley Lit Prize.
Rhys Slade-Jones is an interdisciplinary artist hailing from Treherbert and living and working in South Wales. Walking the line between the convivial and the confrontational, Rhys creates political work that straddles the worlds of performance, cabaret and craft. Their work is a meditation on queer ecologies, the limitless exuberance of queer raves and the inherently political nature of joy, all of which are complicated by a simultaneous awareness of environmental catastrophe and collective lament.
Rhys is currently Artist in Service for Rhondda Cynon Taf County Borough Council, was a 2022 Future Wales Fellow with the Arts Council of Wales, and is a founding member of the queer Welsh performance collective CWM RAG.
About the commission
Back in May, we launched our National Lottery Heritage Funded commissions to create two artworks by two artists informed by the contents of Ffotogallery’s archive, building on the participative and community-focused aims of our heritage project. Proposals were sought from artists working with photographic and lens-based media. Two commissions were available one for £2,000 (artwork commission, for a disabled artist) and one for £2,500 (artwork and workshop commission for LGBTQ+ identifying artist).
More updates and announcements on the artists, their work and the sharing of the outcomes will be announced in due course.
To arrange your own visit to Ffotogallery to look at The Valley’s archive, please contact: chloe@ffotogallery.org
This project was made possible by the National Lottery Heritage Fund, with thanks to National Lottery players.
