Stephen Price
A solo exhibition of new works by ‘Young British Artist’ James Rielly opens today, featuring his celebrated iconography offering modern-day parables about Wales and the world today.
Presented by Cardiff’s TEN, the new exhibition from James Rielly, whose painting form part of collections at the Tate, Saatchi and the National Museum of Wales features some of his boldest and most important works yet.
Tŷ Mawr follows on from Rielly’s 2024 exhibition, ‘Tŷ Hyll’, his first as a TEN artist and first in Cymru in over a decade.
The exhibition includes a series of oil paintings on canvas and linen, heavily gessoed and delicately painted ceramic plates. Akin to religious frescos, we see familiar and reoccurring motifs – some of these present throughout Rielly’s career.
The pieces are a snapshot of an ongoing narrative, a ‘still’ of a fantastically mysterious and inherently dark folk tale. They tread the edge of the bizarre and the familiar with no obvious context, simultaneously threatening and cutesy, swaying between tragedy and comedy, and landing squarely in the wholly relevant.
They tread the edge of the bizarre and the familiar with no obvious context, simultaneously threatening and cutesy, swaying between tragedy and comedy, and landing squarely in the wholly relevant.
All are intimate in scale and draw in the viewer – at times the subject meets our gaze as we look, others hide completely behind a mask, playful yet unnerving.
The exhibition includes a collection from the ‘Random Acts of Kindness’ series from 2018 – ceramic plates made and hand painted by Rielly. Yet again here, we see well-known images from Rielly’s oeuvre – the insect with a boy’s head, the many-eyed face, children in ghostly fancy dress; the repetition, reappearance, continual retelling of the imagery.
Rielly weaves these motifs in whatever medium and scale he likes – and the uncertain ambiguity persists.
Humour is the prevalent note, and Rielly uses that gallows humour as a common tool to bring us in. The overarching theme here is that of us humans, our human condition and the world we have destroyed for ourselves.
Through pointing at the ridiculousness of it all and mock-laughing at the absurdity of modern life, Rielly’s sugar-coated satire gives us that buffer we need to look at ourselves without loosing hope – and to hopefully learn our lesson. He offers us a coping mechanism – if we don’t laugh, we’ll cry.
Rielly grew up in Holyhead, north Wales and now lives in France as a professor at Beaux-Arts de Paris.
He was part of the London art scene of the 90s as one of the notable YBA’s – with his work included in Saatchi’s infamous ‘Sensation’ exhibition in 1997, alongside artists such as Tracy Emin, Damien Hirst and Chris Ofili. He grew up in Holyhead and now lives in France and exhibits internationally
Any recognisable figures are boys – typically boisterous and physical – on the cusp of awkward adolescence. The painting ‘Saint Cybi and Saint Seiriol Together in Silent Prayer’ depict – presumably the 6th century Welsh saints – two boys in fake white beards, more scheming brothers than pious pilgrims.
We approach the work with our own cultural points of reference, looking for context and ‘hooks’ to understand. The burning house of ‘Croeso i Gymru’ is a comment on the actions of Meibion Glyndŵr and their destruction of holiday homes in Rielly’s own home county – is it not?
Humour is the prevalent note, and Rielly uses that gallows humour as a common tool to bring us in. The overarching theme here is that of us humans, our human condition and the world we have destroyed for ourselves.
Through pointing at the ridiculousness of it all and mock-laughing at the absurdity of modern life, Rielly’s sugar-coated satire gives us that buffer we need to look at ourselves without losing hope – and to hopefully learn our lesson.
Rielly shared: “I have always collected images and made my paintings/drawings based on these images, found images cut up reworked and changed. This started at a young age.
“I did not know what I was doing. I always collected images together in scrap books, most of these have long disappeared . I had one with all the newspaper photos I could find about the death of Winston Churchill, this was the first half of a scrap book and the second half was Man from U.N.C.L.E. a tv program I loved.”
“Also I had one just about the Aberfan disaster, as the children where about the same age as me. Others where about Dylan Thomas and so on.”
Welshness
He explains that he grew up speaking Welsh as a small child until he had to speak English throughout his schooling. His Welsh was maintained through the Urdd Esiteddfod: he won prizes for singing, and for art.
His making art was encouraged by a teacher involved in the Urdd, giving confidence to the thought that this could be something he could pursue seriously.
Leaving Wales to study at Cheltenham, Rielly then took an MA in art in Belfast, and returned shortly afterwards for a residency in the city.
Obviously Belfast in the early 1980s was a complex, challenging environment, and one that provoked much creative energy.
Rielly was taught by Alastair MacLennan. MacLennan, with his quiet, thoughtful and gentle demeanour, made vivid durational performances and installations.
Rielly said: “When I started trying to be an artist, I felt I knew what I was doing and why I was doing it. Now I have no fixed idea and most of the time I cannot explain in an easy way what I am doing.”
Ahead of today’s launch of his new exhibition, he told Nation Cymru: ‘I’m thrilled to be exhibiting once again, following my return to showing in Cymru in over ten years with ’Tÿ Hyll’ at TEN in 2024.
“I grew up up in Holyhead next to Tŷ Mawr, a Bronze Age standing stone, and I like the continuation of the exhibition titles, and in a way, ’Tŷ Mawr’ as a body of work is a continuation of ’Tŷ Hyll’’
Tŷ Mawr launches at Gallery Ten on Friday 23 October 2026 and runs until 29 November 2026
Open Wednesday – Saturday 10:30-17:00 at TEN. rear of 143 Donald Street Cardiff CF24 4TP
All artworks will be available to view and purchase online at www.gallery-ten.co.uk
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