About the Exhibition

Four contemporaries of writer Raymond Williams: Joan Baker, Charles Burton, John Elwyn and Bert Isaac

Ffiniau featured four artist contemporaries of the writer Raymond Williams whose paintings conjure daily life in South Wales communities from the 1930s to the 1950s.

The inspiration for this special exhibition was Border Country, the autobiographical novel set in and around Abergavenny by Raymond Williams (1921-1988), first published in 1960. The ‘border’ refers to the conjunction of England and Wales, but boundaries iterate throughout the book’s characterisation of south Wales around the middle of the twentieth century:

borders between town, country and coalfield;

borders between nature and man;

borders between generations;

borders between classes;

borders between close community and wider world.

This exhibition, curated by Dr Peter Wakelin, arrived directly from the National Eisteddfod of Wales in Abergavenny and continued on tour to MoMA Machynlleth.