Tŷ Pawb

Exhibition: Allanol Always
2025-07-11 - 2025-10-25
Tŷ Pawb will present Allanol Always this summer, a new solo show by Welsh-Ghanaian artist Anya Paintsil on view from July to November 2025.
Delving into the complex expectations placed on Black artists regarding beauty, heritage, and representation; Allanol Always challenges the problematic pressure to depict Black figures through the lens of European high art, and the marginalisation of African and Caribbean art histories.
Embracing Allanol Always as a space for artistic exploration and experimentation, the show represents a significant moment in Paintsil’s artistic journey and coincides with her permanent return to her hometown of Wrexham later this year. Developing an entirely new and experimental body of work, Paintsil will experiment with new materials and techniques, including innovative appliqué methods, textile assemblages using repurposed and waste fabrics, and a series of freestanding sculptures created in collaboration with her partner, weaver Steven William. These sculptural objects, inspired by Welsh mythology, lean towards abstraction, exploring themes of monstrous figuration and the grotesque.
Drawing from her childhood in North Wales, folklore and the Fante tradition of figurative textiles, Paintsil weaves together craft techniques from her youth – rug making, appliqué and hand embroidery – with those of afro hair styling methods to create bold, textural portraits. Referencing the enduring influence of traditional West African art in her work and the visual language rooted in the forms of the masks of Kongo peoples, Aku’aba dolls and Asafo Flags, Paintsil considers the stark disparities at play where white artists are celebrated for drawing from African art, labelled as ‘tribal’ or ‘primitive’ in a romanticised sense; whilst Black artists alluding to the very same traditions are at risk of misinterpretation as self-caricature or satire, which in turn reinforces harmful stereotypes.
Through Allanol Always, Paintsil looks to disrupt these restrictive narratives, advocating for a broader, more inclusive understanding of Black art outside of Eurocentric paradigms. The choice of the Welsh word ‘Allanol’, translating to “outside” or “external,” in the exhibition’s title speaks to the positioning of African art as “outsider art” within the dominant narratives of Western art history, an act of othering that Paintsil acknowledges and seeks to directly challenge in their work. The title also resonates with Paintsil’s artistic focus on the human body’s exterior and its significance in shaping individual and collective experiences from which she explores themes of identity, representation, and the complexities of the Black female experience.
For Paintsil, the implications of the title are deeply nuanced, as on a personal level “Allanol” echoes her own experience of otherness as an artist and a woman of colour, where even within her hometown she has at times felt an outsider navigating societal expectations and her own artistic vision.
Paintsil’s solo show explores creativity and creative license within Black figuration, inviting viewers to engage with the work on their own terms. Curated in collaboration with independent curator Lewis Dalton Gilbert, Allanol Always will be accompanied by a programme of community events at Tŷ Pawb.
About Anya Paintsil
Anya Paintsil is a Welsh and Ghanaian textile artist who lives and works in London and Glyn Ceiriog. Drawing inspiration from her childhood in North Wales, and her ancestral, Fante tradition of figurative textiles, Paintsil combines craft practices she was taught as a young child; rug making, appliqué and hand embroidery with afro hairstyling techniques to create large scale portraits. Paintsils’ figures explore the possibilities and politics of non-representative depictions of the Black figure.
Often mistaken as subversion of ‘primitivism’, Paintsil deliberately and consciously refuses to root her work in the European Fine Art Canon, Paintsil’s visual language finds its basis in traditional West African Crafts and Art – carvings, wood sculptures, masks – exchanging the hard materials for soft, in an interrogation of gendered labour, particularly the labour of working class women.
Anya made her debut at 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair in London in 2020, and since then Anya has received sustained interest from private collectors and public institutions. Recent acquisitions include Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, The National Museum of Wales, The Whitworth Gallery, Manchester and The Women’s Art Collection at Cambridge University.

Print International 2025
2025-11-08 - 2026-01-24 | Tŷ Pawb, Market Street, Wrexham, LL13 8BB
Our biennial print exhibition returns!
Featuring:
East London Printmakers
Constructure
Printing in Dutch
Red Plate Press
Regional Print Centre
Spike Print Studio
Gallery opening times: Mon-Sat, 10am-4pm.
Most prints are for sale!

20 02 06 13 29 34

Exhibition: Jonathan Le Vay - Opus
2026-02-07 - 2026-04-04 | Tŷ Pawb, Market Street, Wrexham, LL13 8BB
Jonathan Le Vay, born in London, studied at Cardiff College of Art (1979-82) and Cyprus College of Art (1985-86) has lived in North Wales for over 35 years. He is an accomplished pianist and jazz composer with a strong interest in the Visual Arts and is a respected curator.
This is a solo exhibition featuring large paintings using observation as a starting point for structure, pattern, composition, beautiful surfaces, colour and movement. These observed figurative elements are used as a vehicle for pleasurable expression and enable easily accessible optical enjoyment.
As an additional layer, some paintings will be paired to short pieces of original music accessed via QR code, offering a multi-sensory experience that will resonate with art and music lovers alike and give an insight into the mind of the artist.

Exhibition: Darch - You Have Done This Before
2026-04-18 - 2026-06-27 | Tŷ Pawb, Market Street, Wrexham, LL13 8BB
A DARCH Collective project, ‘You have done this before’ is an interactive exhibition and communal shrine installation exploring what it means to come of age during a climate crisis.
‘You Have Done This Before’ is a series of coming of age rituals that explore climate grief in young
people. Co-developed through workshops with young people, this project allows for playful and
supported exploration of profound themes; together we’ll develop songs, music, and weird and
wonderful sculptures to connect them with their bodies, emotions, nature and each other.

Exhibition: Anthony Shapland - murmur
2026-07-11 - 2026-10-31 | Tŷ Pawb, Market Street, Wrexham, LL13 8BB
A new solo show by Cardiff based artist and writer Anthony Shapland, guest-curated by Marie-Anne McQuay. The exhibition includes a new film and will be accompanied by an integrated reading space and events programme reflecting Shapland’s interest in the intersection between art and writing.
Tŷ Pawb is delighted to announce a large-scale solo exhibition by Cardiff based artist and writer Anthony Shapland, opening Summer 2026. Anthony Shapland is a Welsh artist, founder of artist-led space g39 and novelist. Within his writing and artistic practice, he blends documentary and fiction, drawing on his lived experience of rural queerness and growing up performing straight.
Exhibition runs: 11 July – 31 October 2026
Preview and Press View: 10 July 2026
Shapland was recently selected as one of The Observer’s 10 best new novelists 2025 and Waterstone’s Welsh book of the year for his debut novel A Room Above a Shop (Granta), which tells the story of hidden intimacy between two men living in a South Wales valley in the late 1980s, during the time of Section 28. Continuing to work between the gallery and the printed page, whether in image, text or film, Shapland constructs intimate portraits of lives lived at the edges of rural landscapes, often filmed on location around Bargoed, the town in the Rhymney Valley where he grew up. His ongoing fascination with illusion and mimicry, reflecting the ways in which his protagonists seek to blend in with their surroundings, manifests in his use of the hidden techniques of traditional filmmaking, including props, backdrops, filters, artificial light and Foley sound effects. These cinematic devices in turn set up and then unpack coded narratives. Speaking also to other concealed lives, the artist asks, “What happens when you stay?”
Shapland’s exhibition at Tŷ Pawb will include a new film and builds on recent moving image work, including Starling Seven (2025), in which a montage of starlings copy and repeat man-made noises, and Between the Dog and the Wolf (2019) which encapsulates the artist’s interest in the cinematic illusion of shooting day for night. The exhibition will be accompanied by an integrated reading space and a dynamic public programme.
Shapland’s solo show will be guest-curated by long time peer and associate Marie-Anne McQuay, previously curator of Liverpool Biennial 2025, with Tŷ Pawb Creative Director Jo Marsh.
Anthony Shapland said: “I’m excited to be working at Tŷ Pawb – exploring the space between exhibition and publication, image and word and referring to a life lived in two parts, performed – never what it seemed on the surface. Nothing is what it appears to be, and an early desire to not stand-out, even after coming-out, has had a lasting impact on all of my work – filled with references to stage and backstage, to a performance of life. At Tŷ Pawb I’m keen to blur the line between inside and outside the gallery. “
Creative Director Tŷ Pawb Jo Marsh said: “We are absolutely delighted to be presenting this exciting new body of work by Anthony Shapland here at Tŷ Pawb next year. Anthony is a truly cherished Welsh artist, at a significant moment in his career. This solo exhibition offers us a fantastic opportunity to engage with Anthony’s beautiful, poetic and unique vision and celebrate his significant contribution to contemporary art in Wales. We can’t wait to share it with our visitors. Building on our initial partnership as part of the Venice Biennale 2019, working with independent curator Marie-Anne McQuay on this project, fresh from her role as curator of Liverpool Biennial 2025, is a dream.”
Guest Curator, Marie-Anne McQuay said: “I’ve followed Anthony Shapland’s practice for nearly 20 years and am so delighted to finally work with him on a solo show for Tŷ Pawb, Wrexham. I’m looking forward to sharing his incredible sensibility for observation and detail, which manifests both in his filmmaking and writing, with audiences next year”
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Exhibition: The Tŷ Pawb Open
2026-11-14 - 2027-03-27 | Tŷ Pawb, Market Street, Wrexham, LL13 8BB
Our biennial open call exhibition returns for its 4th edition. The 2024 edition featured over 100 artworks, following a record response to our open call, with nearly 450 artists submitting works.
Details on how to submit artworks will be announced in the next few months.
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