• Biography

    Llanelli 2014

    Gold Medal for Fine Art

    Sean Edwards (b. Cardiff, 1980) graduated with an MA from the Slade School of Art in 2005 and is currently Programme Director for Fine Art & Photography at Cardiff School of Art and Design.
    His work investigates the sculptural and political potential of the everyday, using remnants and fragments as a starting point. Objects appear in-progress and open to change, woven together with personal, familial and political histories through sculpture, mixed media installation and audio-visual work.

    Edwards represented Wales at the 58th Venice Biennale (2019) with Undo Things Done, an installation addressing austerity, class, shame and loss that drew on his own experience of growing up on a council estate. It included a live radio play performed daily for seven months by his mother, later adapted for BBC Radio 4. He was awarded the Turner Prize Bursary in 2020. He has exhibited widely nationally and internationally, including at Centre Pompidou, Paris, and Lisson Gallery, London and hiss work is in public collections including National Museum Wales, Arts Council and The Government Collection.' Sean won the Gold Medal for Fine Art at the 2014 National Eisteddfod in Llanelli.

  • Llanelli 2014

    Maelfa
  • HD Video
    29'45''

    Interested in things that get ‘left behind’ or ‘overlooked’, Sean Edwards makes use of photography, installation and moving image to explore the sculptural potential of the everyday. In 2009 Edwards undertook a residency in the Maelfa shopping centre in Llanedeyrn on the outskirts of Cardiff, close to where he grew up. Built in the 1970s around a block of high-rise flats in a council estate, the Maelfa shopping centre was once a well-used and popular institution, but later fell into disrepair. It is now the subject of a multi-million pound regeneration scheme. During his residency at the centre, Edwards made a series of works stemming from close observation of the near-derelict space. One of these, the slow-paced silent film Maelfa (2010), offers long gliding shots of the building’s interior surfaces. Meditative and sombre, it reflects both on the disappearance of once vibrant communities, and failed utopian aspirations.

     

    Coutesy Arts Council Collection

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