A Magnet for Artists

Displaying works from local and visiting artists, Ardent Gallery is another example of Brecon’s vibrant arts scene.

Located in a building that dates back to 1586 (the oldest on Brecon High Street), its three floors are home to a selection of light and airy galleries packed with paintings, jewellery and sculpture – plus a cosy coffee and cake shop.

Ardent’s Brecon-born Gallery Manager Gemma Schiebe, a BA (Hons) fine art graduate, describes the town as a magnet for artists and a place where younger creators like herself are helped and encouraged by their peers. Despite being a comparatively small place, Brecon punches well above its weight in terms of its cultural and artistic life.

On the face of it Brecon is a small town and then you come to the town and you peel it away and there’s so much going on that you almost can’t believe it.
— Gemma Schiebe

Transcription

Describing Ardent to someone who's never been there is fairly simple because it's to me it's really memorable. So there's three floors of art gallery with a really varied selection of artwork. In an old building, a really old building, actually one of the oldest buildings on our high street. It was first registered in 1586. And as you walk through the building, obviously, you see all of the old beams, some old, like features, like our fireplaces that go throughout the three floors, and kind of the building is an artwork in itself. So you have all these amazing artworks housed within a massive artwork, which is you walk in and that's always blew me away, like even working here for years that I still come in and think yeah, this space is really, really amazing. So the history as well, that we I mean, there's a lady, a local lady, she's a photographer and through her master's in photography, did a lot of research into the history of our building and took really interesting photographs of the artworks the space and made this amazing installation, an exhibition about the building, which was really nice because then our building literally became a piece of art.

So yeah, Ardent is a place of exhibitions, it's a place of music over the Jazz Festival. We have live music events, we have events with artists features where artists from all over, not just from Brecon are brought to Brecon, which I think is really important. Because Ardent supports local artists and most of our exhibitions are about 40% local, but we also have published artists who exhibit in galleries all over the UK. So we're not only putting you know Ardent on the map, we are putting Brecon on the map for being somewhere that has artwork of that calibre, which is really exciting.

The more cultural things that there are in a space people come specifically for the culture and specifically to see artwork. And obviously for us, that's what we want. We want people to come and enjoy artwork, see how many exhibitions we have, see the different variety of work we put on show and that's kind of my job now. So last year, I got promoted to manager of the gallery. And before I worked here as the gallery assistant, so I was, you know, working with the artwork, hanging exhibitions, but always under assistance and all that kind of stuff. But now that's all my responsibility.

We try and get artists who don't exhibit with us already, so that they those people get brought to Brecon and people get to see new artwork that they haven't seen before. And we've got quite a few of those. We have a Brecon's women's festival that runs in well it's coming up now. So International Women's Day is eighth of March and The Hours, Leigh and Nikki at tThe Hours plan a really big festival surrounding that. And we host some kind of art event based around, you know, the Women's Day femininity all that. So we've got a female artist coming in doing an artist feature painting in the galleries, we have a residency as well. So we just hold so many different art events in the same space. So if you look at you know the itinerary you know, you've come to Ardent and you're guaranteed to see something different every time which is really, really good. It's nice to be vibrant. I think that echoes the art scene in Brecon. No, we're not the only vibrant art venue, but everybody is very much putting their own events on and getting people to get out and go see things whether that's art or music or whatever it is, you know, we Brecon really encourages people to go out and enjoy culture, which is really incredible.

We have a framing service in Ardent gallery as well. We frame artworks, Ian the gallery owner, and our head framer is the one usually responsible for framing the more unusual items. So it could be anything from I mean, Ian's framed stadium seats from a football match. He's framed sports memorabilia, cricket bats, but the most memorable one for me is when we framed a pizza box for a proposal. So a couple came in and the gentleman was proposing to his partner with a cheesy pizza. He wrote on the lid, like I know this is cheesy, but will you marry me? And she said yes, which is lovely. And then they wanted to commemorate this moment, it was framed into a really high quality gallery standard kind of frame box. And he presented it to her on their anniversary. So that was really amazing to be part of, because they made a pizza box piece of art, like instantly. And that will be a memory for them for the rest of their lives. I'm sure. So it's nice to be a part of and we are part of so many stories. And like so many stories, whether it's people's artwork, or it's their first time exhibiting in a gallery space, whether they've exhibited for years, whether they've got some framing that they don't really know how to frame it, and you know, we look at it and, and sort out for them. But yeah, we're part of a lot of stories in Brecon itself.

I've lived in Brecon all my life. Up until up until the age of 18 when I went to study. So I was born here and spent the whole time doing you know, my art GCSE my A Levels. I've always been interested in art, it's always definitely been the thing that I was gonna go to go into and be interested in. So at eighteen I left Brecon to go study a foundation in art and design in Cardiff, and then went on to study a BA honours degree in fine art. So from my fine art degree then leaving there, it's hard like knowing what you're going to do, how you're going to fit art into everyday life. But obviously, I'm managing a gallery and I paint myself and doing so many art projects that it all fits in really nicely. So my practice, I am an oil painter, and I paint landscapes, but they're not that traditional. So in terms of how I paint with oil, they're really, really traditional. So you will look at a section of them, and they are, but on the face of it really traditionally painted oil paintings of mountains and trees and landscapes. But to make my preparatory sketches I use collage, so I do a lot of hiking, I get out in the Brecon Beacons in the surrounding area a lot. I take a lot of photographs. Then I'll come home and I'll chop little parts of them all up and make compositional collages. So I've got sketchbooks full of little compositional collages. And then every now and then, and I'll be really, really happy with one and it will make it to a painting. So I make what looks like once they're finished, they look like collages, but they're complete flat oil paintings. So they look like there is a relief to them. But they're kind of a homage to a place. So you could be in one place look at a traditional landscape painting, and it's just a square of a landscape. And it's that place, but my work brings together so many different areas of an area, that it's almost that kind of homage and fragments of a different place and it gives you a perspective of the whole area.

So I love oil painting, oil painting I've done for a long time. And I think it blends the paint blend so well that I don't only blend images together, but the paint blends into the landscape as well. And you can see like the painters touch still and, and all that stuff. So I've always been really interested in landscape anyway. So marrying it with art was really easy for me. And yeah, thats what I did for my degree show and what I've continued to doing afterwards. I personally feel really encouraged as an artist in Brecon there's a big generation as well, which is really nice. So we've got artists who are, you know, in the 80s, or there's a gentleman, locally who used to teach in the local art school. And then now he's painting in open studios. So he's passing on his kind of legacy of everything that he's learned throughout his life down to the younger artists, and also to people, which is really, really nice. But I think that's why I feel supported because you've got so many artists who've done it for so long in our area. that me being in Brecon and surrounded by that is obviously really, really helpful and inspiring.

Brecon town open studios is a trail around Brecon. So it's really nice. It's designed by local people, and you're given a map and you follow a trail all the way around Brecon in people's houses. So we've got such a variety of artists living and working in Brecon and you are invited in which is lovely because you never get to go inside someone's house where they make their artwork. So you see people studios, you see their houses, maybe they'll display a gallery type setting. So they'll put up an exhibition, or maybe they won't. Sometimes you see them really raw like working. But there's photography, painting, touring, glassworks sculptures, it's really endless. So if you do the whole trail you get to see so much art in one day, which obviously, for a small town is really exciting. Because that like that's a big part of our art scene, I would say because it happens every year. People come from all over to follow the trail. And often it's really nice, because I've been part of the trail myself for probably three years. And I did have a studio in the vaults, art studios. Unfortunately, it's not there anymore. But we used to have eight artists under one space, and we all made together we were all painting and drawing or we had a lovely photographers that was in there as well. So we were kind of the hub in the middle and then you have all these other venues with so much different art. And you'd get people walking in who didn't even know that it was on but because they're tourists and oh my gosh, there's so much art happening. That's really amazing. So you speak to so many people all day and just see so much different making, which is really exciting.

Brecon for me is on the face of it. A small town is on the face of a small town and then you come to the town and you peel it away. And there's so much going on that you almost can't believe it. Like for me, it's my home. So I was born here and it will always be home. Even if I move away. Like when I was in uni, I'd come back on the bus on the local bus. And as soon as you saw the beacons like your home. Brecon is definitely home. But it's also like, on a personal level. It's been the place where in terms of my art, in terms of a career in art and working in an environment I've always wanted to work in and I wouldn't have had those, those opportunities anywhere different other than here. So it's really special for me, and I'm really, really proud of the town itself and of all the things that I've managed to do here.


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