Taken from Chapter 2: Coed Craig Ruperra Woodlands, South Wales, August 2023
CRWYDRO - WANDERINGS showcases a series of walks undertaken across Wales from 2022-25, with Jane Ponsford and guest poet Laura Wainwright.
Collectively they have talked about moments in places and describe the work, that bridges object, drawing and the written word as a form of storytelling through the materials of land. Their more nuanced points of connection lie within time.
Kim’s work, talks of time in reference to geology. The growth of plants and trees. The time it takes for materials to form and come into being. How places change. Observing environments across the seasons. This can be seen most clearly in her study of the ancient woodland Coed Craig Ruperra in South Wales. Colour, both historically and culturally, have played a pivotal role in each of Kim’s collections. A distinct palette endeavours to capture the atmosphere or mood of place.
Jane’s approach and methodology encompasses many craft-based traditions and the time invested in each piece of work through her rigorous approach to process. Where the laborious repetition of doing becomes somewhat ritualistic. When applied to ‘making applications’ such as sewing, quilting and spinning, these tasks are undertaken almost subconsciously, the body memory holding on to the monotonous movements and patterns of construction. Jane talks of growing the work, where it can be picked up and worked for short periods of time and revisited when convenient. Within many of Jane’s collections of work made for this exhibition, her thinking has been underpinned by folklore and fairy stories.
Laura Wainwright was born in Cardiff and grew up in Newport, Gwent, where she still lives. She attended school in Newport, and Cardiff University where she attained a BA, MA and PhD in English Literature. Her PhD thesis focused on Anglophone Welsh literature and was later published as New Territories in Modernism: Anglophone Welsh Writing, 1930-1949 by the University of Wales Press. Laura has also published poetry pamphlets, Air and Armour (Green Bottle Press, 2021) – the outcome of a Literature Wales Writer’s Bursary – and Coedcernyw: among other things (Clutag Press, 2023). Thrall: Poems and Art, a collaboration with Robert Minhinnick featuring Laura’s poetry and artwork, was published in February 2025 by Seventh Quarry Press. Her poetry collection, The Storm’s Flora, was published in October 2025 by Seren.
Chapter 3 - Parys Mountain copper mine, Anglesey. 2025
Soil on handmade paper from two rivers, Somerset.
Work in Three Chapters
Three locations in Wales make up this body of work, with an approach and particular point of focus deriving from ecology and time, punctuated by colour.
Chapter one is located in the surrounding landscape of Felindre, once the heart of the Welsh Wool industry. This collection of work removes the human perspective and focuses on the role of the teasel.
Chapter two has been observed over a longer period of time, between 2023-25 at Coad Craig Ruperra in south Wales. The Ruperra Conservation Trust bought the woodland in 1996 to undertake major conservation work, replacing the extensive conifer growth between the wars with native trees to regain its ancient woodland status.
Chapter three is on Parys Mountain, a redundant copper mine on Anglesey. Somewhat otherworldly, the earth there is subsumed by its own history, sitting within an almost rainbow spectrum of colour.
Chapter 1 - Wool and Teasels 2023
More to follow………