The Arts

Joseph Conran is an artist and environment sector strategist. His practice inhabits the space between people and nature, often referencing natural processes as a lens through which to interrogate humanity. In both his artistic and strategy practices, Joseph makes spaces where creativity can inspire people to think more about their connection to nature, and their role in safeguarding its future.

Visual Arts Residency— 10/05/25–24/05/25  

During his residency, Joe developed two interconnected projects that will be further explored upon his return to the mainland.  The first, inspired by the Welsh idiom and T H Parry-Williams’ poem Bro, explored new ways of mapping and articulating the “bones” of a place. Joe burned a map of Enlli into canvas, layering it with materials, words, and observations gathered on the island. Drawing from workshops with residents, research at the Ysgol and the Bird Observatory, he combined everyday language, personal reflections, and scientific terminology to create a poetic record of place. 

His second project used Carl Linnaeus’ 18th-century botanical classification system and Erasmus Darwin’s poem The Loves of the Plants as frameworks for examining Enlli’s ecology. Through microscopic study of local flora, Joe created sculptural maquettes that embody each plant’s form, environment, and social symbolism, reinterpreting the island’s natural history through a contemporary, critical lens. 

While in Enlli, Joe delivered three workshops and three open-studio sessions. Activities involved gathering words, observations and found materials from residents and visitors as part of the enquiry. 

William Wyndham is a painter and interdisciplinary artist. Along with his background in traditional painting, he creates sculpture, performances, sound and video. Within these different mediums he works with miniature sets, green screen technology, DIY electronics, props, costumes, mask making and free improvisation. He is constantly exploring new ways to bring these different skills together. This combination of multimedia practices results in colourful, layered compositions of surreal events.  

Dark Skies Residency with Sara Evelyn 24-31st May 2025  

William created a series of candles using sand impressions made by objects found on the beach. From there, he began painting, producing a collection of landscapes viewed from the studio window, alongside a series of seal portraits drawn from direct observation. He also crafted a set of percussive instruments from driftwood and shells, recording improvisations in collaboration with Sara. Additionally, he captured a series of night photographs with his Soviet 120 box camera, using long exposures to reveal the island’s distinctive night light. 

In Enlli he led a painting and colour-mixing workshop encouraging observation of land, sea and sky,followed by a “drawing from touch” session, with some participants blindfolded.

Sara Evelyn is a sound and interdisciplinary artist whose practice spans scenography,  composition, DIY electronics, instrument building and printmaking. Their work considers space, materiality, and site and is often created as a response to the acoustic or material elements of a specific place or environment.  

Dark Skies Residency with William Wyndham 24 -31st May 2025

Esyllt Angharad Lewis is an artist from Craig-Cefn-Parc. Her artwork plays with translation as an aesthetic medium. Her adaptation of Anthony Shapland’s novel ‘Lan Stâr’ (A Room Above a Shop) will be released in spring. She is a co-editor at Stamp Publications and won the Ifor Davies Award at the Pontypridd Eisteddfod 2024 for her performance, Blobus a Phryderon Eraill. 

Research and Development Residency with Catrin Menai 12th-19th July 2025  

Using a map of the island’s field names as a starting point, Catrin and Esyllt explored boundaries: of language, land, and perception – through tactile research and collective conversation. They read the fields by walking, sensing, and talking, straddling ways of knowing often kept separate… poetic and scientific, personal and ecological, spoken and written.  

“Imagining the Field” – a two-hour workshop combining a guided walk with reflection on language and landscape. Six participants. 

Catrin Menai is an artist based between Bethesda (north Wales) and Glasgow. She creates narrative-driven works using the communicative potential of everyday objects, gestures, and place. Through film, writing and found objects, and grounded as much in chance encounter as in close study, she explores ways of thinking with our world, considering care and love as a material space for knowledge-making. Her work has been exhibited at Mostyn and The Turner House, and published with Poetry Wales. She completed an MFA at the Glasgow School of Art in 2021. 

Research and Development Residency with Esyllt Angharad Lewis 12th-19th July 2025  

Using a map of the island’s field names as a starting point, Catrin and Esyllt explored boundaries: of language, land, and perception- through tactile research and collective conversation. They read the fields by walking, sensing, and talking, straddling ways of knowing often kept separate… poetic and scientific, personal and ecological, spoken and  “Imagining the Field” – a two-hour workshop combining a guided walk with reflection on language and landscape. Six participants

c_menai 

www.catrinmenai.co.uk  

ArtesMundi  

Rhian Haf creates installations and sculptural works using glass’ qualities and contrasting capabilities as a focus for her work. She has exhibited widely in the UK and abroad. 

Craft Residency 2-16th August 2025  

Rhian spent two weeks on the island observing shadows, light, horizons, plants and more. She created a site-responsive sculpture made from paper brushed with oil and sewn together  

Tŷ Newydd –  30 pieces created for the 30 bodies discovered here during excavations from 1993–98. 25 graves were found, including one containing five children. Burial style suggests medieval dates, and a 10th-century coin was found in one grave. The bones were removed from the island and have not yet been returned. Paper brushed with oil and stitched together. 

Llewyrch –  Inspired by the shifting light on the horizon – shadows, layers, reflections. I created 30 glass pieces, using varied techniques to explore light and space. 

Rhian delivered a collage workshop using plant shadows to create prints and drawings and an end-of-residency studio exhibition. 

www.rhianhaf.com 

@_rhianhaf 

Huw Jones is based in Rhoscolyn on Anglesey. His work is rooted in the landscapes of Ynys Môn and Eryri. His creative process begins outdoors, capturing fleeting changes in light, weather, and season through sketches and paintings in gouache, acrylic, and mixed media. In the studio, he develops these into finished pieces while retaining the spontaneity and emotional energy of the original marks. His work explores the interplay of colour, texture, and composition, often highlighting abstract qualities and negative space. Huw aims to express a deep sense of place and connection, creating artwork that invites viewers to engage with their landscape. 

Visual Arts Residency 26th July  – 2nd August 2025

During his residency on Bardsey Island, Huw Jones developed his style by working in a freer, more experimental way, mixing media and exploring the coastline and sea as new subjects. The residency gave him the opportunity to focus on detail and to convey the feeling and drama of the landscape, strengthening both his confidence and his creative approach. Huw delivered a black-and-white painting workshop along the coastline opposite Solfach beach with around 12 participants, followed by a mixed-media colour workshop using watercolour, charcoal, acrylic and pastel.

www.huwjonesart.co.uk 

@huwgarethjones  

Enlli and Lleucu are Dwy – a dynamic flute duo from Cardiff. They are musicians who combine their interests in folk music, traditional dance, classical music, and Welsh culture to produce work that incorporates electronic effects and extended techniques in performances that create a unique, energetic, and memorable sound. 

 In 2023, Dwy won a commission from the National Eisteddfod and the Arts Council to create an outdoor performance as part of the WYTH project, which would push the boundaries of traditional forms and bring clog dancing to new audiences. Since then, Dwy has enjoyed developing and expanding on this idea. 

Music and Performance Residency – 19th July – 2nd August 2025 

Dwy are the first musicians to take part in the Ynys Enlli residency programme and it was brilliant to hear their music being carried around the landscape on the sea breeze. 

They turned the studio into a recital space, then a clog dancing workshop and later in the week a stage for a show. They developed a piece that was then performed at the National Eisteddfod on 7 of August 2025. 

www.dwy.cymru  

@dwy.music 

Marged Tudur is a poet, writer, and editor from Morfa Nefyn and now lives in Caernarfon. She graduated in Welsh at Aberystwyth University, studied an MA in Creative Writing, and was awarded a PhD for her study on reading lyrics form Welsh pop songs from the last fifty years as literature.   She is one of the editors of Rhywbeth i’w Ddweud (‘Something to Say’, Cyhoeddiadau Barddas, 2017), a volume by various contributors that looks at the power of words by exploring influential political Welsh songs. 

 In 2020 she published her first volume of poetry, Mynd (‘Going’, Gwasg Carreg Gwalch), in which she discusses the experience of losing her brother. The volume won the 2021 Book of the Year award in the Poetry category and is selected to our 2021 Bookcase. 

Aled Rhys Jones  

Aled Rhys Jones works as a camera operator and director. 

Visual Arts Residency 30th August – 13th September 2025  

Together they will be collaborating on a short poetry film. While Marged was writing and walking, Aled was filming and recording sounds, above the waves, along edges of rocks, on the mountain, between two fields, near the lighthouse, in the houses, in the school, in the remains of the abbey – in sun, rain, wind and in the early hours of the morning. From filming time-lapses to filming in slow motion, he tried to document the landscape and the busy comings and goings of the people who live and work on the island. 

waleslitexchange.org/authors/tudur-marged  

@margedtudur 

Rebecca Thomas is a scholar and creative writer specialising in the history, culture, and literature of medieval Wales. Her main area of research explores how Welsh identities were constructed in medieval texts. Her book History and Identity in Early Medieval Wales (Boydell & Brewer, 2022) examines how names, territory, language, and origin legends shaped national identity. The book won the Francis Jones Prize for Welsh History (2022), and in 2023 she received the Learned Society of Wales’s Dillwyn Medal for contributions to the humanities. Her current British Academy–funded research focuses on hostages in medieval Wales and the political and cultural connections between Wales and the wider world. 

Alongside her academic work, Rebecca is also a creative writer and has published two medieval historical novels for young adults, Dan Gysgod y Frenhines (2022) and Y Castell ar y Dŵr (2023). In 2022 she was appointed Welsh Writer in Residence for Bannau Brycheiniog National Park, producing Anturiaethau’r Brenin Arthur (2024) in response to the nature and climate crises. Her essay Cribo’r Dragon’s Back won the inaugural O’r Pedwar Gwynt Essay Prize in 2021, and in 2025 she will be Artist in Residence in Ynys Enlli and one of the Hay Festival’s Writers at Work.

 Writing Residency 16th-30th August 2025  

David and Rebecca spent two weeks in Ynys Enlli as Resident Artists in August, continuing their research and writing on the island’s monks and saints. 

David Callander is a medievalist and literary scholar who specialises in early Welsh poetry and medieval Welsh literature. His research is comparative in nature, seeking to explore what can be learnt by bringing together distinct literary traditions, comparing Middle Welsh, Old English, Middle English, and medieval Latin texts. He also undertakes comparative research between vernacular and Latin texts from medieval Wales and other Celtic languages. His other areas of interest include examining how modern literary theory and medieval literature can mutually inform one another, and studying the post-medieval transformation of medieval texts. This was the focus of his latest book Trawsffurfio’r Seintiau (Transforming the Saints, University of Wales Press, 2024), based on the trilingual hagiographic anthology Yale, Osborn fb229.

Writing Residency 16th-30th August 2025  

David and Rebecca spent two weeks in Ynys Enlli as Resident Artists in August, continuing their research and writing on the island’s monks and saints!  

David Callander is a scholar working on medieval literature. He has dealt with the lives of Welsh saints from the Middle Ages, editing several texts for the seintiau.cymru project and publishing his latest book, Transforming the Saints: The Yale Manuscript of the Lives of the Saints. University of Wales Press, 2024 on this subject. Rebecca Thomas is a historian and novelist. She has published three young adult novels with Gwasg Carreg Gwalch and her first adult novel, Y Tŵr , was published by Sebra in April 2025. 

Richard Harris (b 1954, Devon) has been making environmental sculpture since 1976. While studying at Gloucestershire College of Art and Design, he chose to work outdoors, building structures from found stone and wood. After his studies, he spent a year based in a Dartmoor studio, further deepening his connection with nature. Harris rose to prominence as the first resident artist at Grizedale Forest in 1977, where he explored specific sites and worked with natural materials to create human-scale works encouraging subtle, intuitive interaction. From 1979–81 he travelled in Australia, becoming aware of Aboriginal relationships with the land, creating Hollow Hill, an earthwork in Melbourne. Returning to the UK, he was drawn to the north east’s growing public art scene, working on major projects in Gateshead and County Durham, including Passage Paving on London’s South Bank and a residency in Wuppertal, Germany. Since 1994, Harris has lived in Wales and worked widely across Europe, Japan, Korea, and Cuba. His sculptures often balance engineering precision and natural form, from polished stainless-steel poles elevating stones in the Weymouth Olympic sculpture to finely cut slate wings at the Senedd in Cardiff, each work reflecting and heightening awareness of its environment. 

Group Site Responsive Sculpture Residency 13 – 20th September 2025 

During his residency on Enlli, Richard Harris responded to the elemental force of wind and sea, creating work that reflected the movement, energy and harmony between land and water. Inspired by the piles of seaweed thrown ashore by the storm, he explored ideas of natural forms and hidden spaces, using stone and seaweed as his materials. His work became a live response to Enlli’s wild landscape, forming a direct connection between body, materials and the natural elements. 

Alison is an award-winning multidisciplinary artist working across performance, installation, and social engagement. Her work invites re-enchantment with the natural world through ritual moments, immersive journeys, and interactive installations. She reimagines spaces for performance and social connection with a strong focus on sustainability. The embodied, sensory relationship between audience, place, and story is central to her practice. Alison predominantly works in public spaces, inviting accidental encounters and moments of the unexpected within the everyday. Her recent work includes large-scale participatory performances and installations with Creative Folkestone, the National Trust, and the Kent National Landscape & Pas de Calais UNESCO Geopark bid. She was recently selected as one of eight Future Wales Fellows, supported by Arts Council Wales, Natural Resources Wales, and Peak Cymru. 

Group Site Responsive Sculpture Residency 13 – 20th September 2025 

During her residency in Ynys Enlli, Alison Neighbour developed a series of walking scores for the island, including night-time walks and journeys for day visitors, as templates for similar work elsewhere. She also continued to evolve her practice of “dancing with rocks”, building on work she had begun on the island in May and exploring how this could meet an audience. The week, shaped by a powerful storm that raged around the studio, also inspired new performance and sculptural work responding to the raw energy of the weather. 

Alison set out to discover what the wind might offer, to experience what it was like to greet the storm as it first struck the island. During her explorations, the tide gifted her a beautiful cloak of seaweed, five strands from one holdfast, each with long translucent fingers, asking to be worn and brought back to life. Together they faced the storm, holding fast in 50mph winds and letting the wind lead their movement in a dance between earth, sea, and air. Throughout the week, her thoughts turned to precarity and shelter, the fragile nature of existence and the island’s many forms of refuge, from rare lichens to young seals, fledgling birds, and human inhabitants. Later, the cloak was hung in Y Storws, a small building by the harbour, a place of shelter as they waited for the boat home, filled with the wild energy of possibility. 

www.alisonneighbourdesign.com 

@alisonneighbourart 

Jeanette Gray, originally from Scotland and now based in mid Wales, is a weaver and artist who specialises in working with wild, locally gathered plant materials. She began weaving in 2012 after attending her first willow basketry course – “love at first basket”! In 2017, she completed a two-year professional training in basketry at City Lit College in London and has since developed a sensitive practice that combines traditional techniques with environmental awareness. Her work centres on connecting people with the landscapes around them, using weaving as a way to explore the relationship between nature, community, and cultural heritage. She believes that weaving offers a tangible and reflective way to understand the value of the natural world, creating deep connections between ecology, culture, and people. 

Group Site Responsive Sculpture Residency 13 – 20th September 2025 

Jeanette’s stay on Ynys Enlli was cut short, and she was unable to fully realise her planned projects on the island. However, she continued to develop the work on the mainland, responding to the experiences and materials gathered during her time there. She plans to return in the future to complete the projects she began, continuing to explore the relationship between light, material, and landscape in response to the island’s unique environment. 

@Weaving_wild 
www.weavingwild.co.uk  

Manon Dafydd is an artist and graphic designer from Y Felinheli. After completing the art foundation course at Coleg Menai, Bangor, she went on to graduate with a BA in Graphic Design at Central Saint Martins, London. Since returning home Manon has been developing her artistic practice whilst enjoying various experiences of working with children, young people, adults and the elderly in a creative sense. She is one of two editors and the graphic designer for Welsh language magazine Codi Pais, which celebrates creativity and women’s voices in Wales. She is inspired by the natural world, her family, her local area and Welsh identity.  

Group Site Responsive Sculpture Residency 13 – 20th September 2025 

In Enlli Manon Dafydd sought to explore and understand the deep connection between people and place, and how a sense of loss, whether personal or caused by climate or social change, can affect individuals, communities and the Welsh language. During her time on the island she studied the flora and fauna, looking back through photographs and exploring the relationship between memory and identity. She combined these elements with text, creating work both in the studio and on the tide-washed beach where the sea carried the words away. 

@mansiporffor 

www,manondafydd.com  

Jo lived and worked on Bardsey from 2007-2018 and enjoys using raw materials such as wool and willow from the island to make useful and beautiful pieces. Jo makes wool rugs, willow baskets and numerous items from flets, these are available to buy from their shop on the island or through her website.

Wildlife artist Kim Atkinson lived on the island for the first seven years of her life and again for ten years in the 1980s and ‘90s. Her work has been exhibited all over Wales and England and her artistic reputation has brought her invitations to work in many parts of the world, including Australia and Poland. Many of the goods produced for the Bardsey shop bear the unmistakable images created by Kim.

The artist, writer and poet Brenda Chamberlain lived at Carreg from 1947 to 1962. It was an especially productive period in her life. During this period, she twice won the Gold Medal for Art at the National Eisteddfod. Some of the murals she painted can still be seen on the walls of Carreg, and several of her paintings and drawings are inspired by the island, as is her volume Tide Race, Tide Race: 1962, now in its fifth printing – Seren Books, March 2019.