Wales

Gawain Barnard

www.gawainbarnard.com

Biography

Gawain Barnard (b. 1976) completed an MFA in Documentary Photography at the University of Wales, Newport in 2009.

His Photographic work and research have mainly focused on the environment and people of his youth. Making quiet portraits of adolescence and precise observations of their surroundings, Barnard brings new and fresh reflections of the once industrialised regions of South Wales.

Barnard was the winner of the 2013 Aneurin Morgan Thomas award for best artwork from Wales as part of the National Art Open and a featured artist of the 2014 Eisteddfod. In 2011, he received the Arts Council of Wales funding for an individual artist which resulted in FFotogallery showcase Wish you Were Here.

He is also one of the founding members of A Fine Beginning, a collective whose aim is to discover and showcase contemporary photography being made in Wales today.

His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally.

Gawain Barnard's intimate photography exposes the anxieties, hopes, suspicions and the excitations of growing up through a series of portraits of young people captured on the cusp of adulthood.
Tranquil yet unsettling, the cool expressions caught in the camera's lens by the hidden turmoil that comes with approaching maturity. Softly lit faces stare with apprehensive eyes into the uncertain spaces beyond the portraits' borders.
Barnard's images, interspersed with photos of the natural environments that his subjects inhabit, reflect the sense of disturbance following the realisation that the lingering summers of youth are about to come to an end. The title is a reference to a moment of self-awareness in the artist's own life.

Journeys by Train: Glimpses of a hidden Europe is a story of a borderless continent. In one sense modern Europe has become an open landform accessible to all its inhabitants and run by a central governance in Brussels, on another the landscape, the people and cultures of countries are so diverse and recognisably unique, they’ll remain enduringly separate.
So far Journeys by train has explored six European countries over four years and is an ongoing journey exploring culture, people and train journeys of Europe.