Jack Arts

James Rielly, Tŷ Hyll

Roath-based gallery TEN. specialise in representing contemporary Welsh and Wales-based artists to give the country’s best artists constant and active representation; their current exhibition Tŷ Hyll is James Rielly’s first exhibition in Wales for over a decade. Rielly is one of the Young British Artists of the 1990s and his subtle yet inherently dark work is part of collections including Tate, Saatchi and the National Museum of Wales; JACK ARTS partnered with TEN. to showcase a series of his works in Cardiff.

The group of new small works in oil on canvas, viewed at an intimate level in the gallery are brought in front of the viewer at large scale street-side, forcing passers-by to meet the gaze of the ‘masked’ subjects. The playful yet unnerving portraits are delicately painted, akin to religious frescos and displayed alongside paintings of houses shrouded in darkness or ablaze in the night. The paintings provide a bizarre visual narrative almost like a cartoon-panelled folktale across the poster sites, ‘mock-laughing at the absurdity of modern life’.