Art
Even if you're not coming here to study at the School of Art, or if your experience has been restricted to stuffy galleries, if you have an interest in visual art you're in for a nice surprise! Here you'll find a lively community with lots of creative exchange between genres. A fine example of this is Showroom, a monthly club night showcasing performances and presentations that span the disciplines of time-based, auditory and visual media all made into a great night out with DJs and fun prizes.
Keep an eye out for events and Lunchtime Lectures at the School of Art. Most exhibitions at the Arts Centre will have an accompanying talk by the artist.
Taking Part
For structured classes, between the Univeristy's School of Education and Lifelong Learning, the Arts Centre and local galleries, you can choose from the likes of:
- Art for Starters: Drawing, Colour Exploration
- Sculpture for Everyone: Clay, The Study of Art and Art History, Photoshop For Photographers, Imaging With Photoshop
- Life Drawing: Charcoal, Oil Painting: A Beginner's Guide, History Of Printmaking.
- Express Yourself: Painting, Photoshop For Absolute Beginners.
- Figurative Sculpture: Ceramics Or Thermalite, Willow Sculpture, Welsh Art And The Landscape, Watercolour For Everyone, Approaches To Life Drawing, Land Art, Contemporary Art And Discussion, Seas And Skies In Watercolour and many, many more!
Studio space is available to suit your needs, and range from the amazing Heatherwick Studios to The Art Schak community, to the Digilab at the Arts Centre for printing, scanning and editing software.
The best part about Aberystwyth is the scenery that's on your doorstep; make use of the outstanding landscape, both as subject matter and as a display and performance environment. You'll find many like-minded people in Land Art classes, and art groups.
Galleries
The town has four major galleries that have international touring exhibitions as well as one-off shows: The National Library of Wales, The Ceredigion Museum, The School of Art and The Aberystwyth Arts Centre (which in itself has 3 galleries).
There are also a couple of smaller galleries in town such as Toko and Bridge Street galleries.
A short ride away in Machynlleth you'll find MOMA Wales. The hippy-chic town itself has several interesting galleries.
The department offers a huge range from life drawing – I mean wherever I went life drawing was like swearing, you couldn’t do it – but you can do life drawing, portrait painting, to installation work and very modern performance art here. You can do anything you want – whereas everywhere else does modern teaching and leaves the traditional behind.