In our short series Five Minutes With, we’ve been shining a light on the people who help bring Meadow Arts’ vision to life. From dedicated team members to our brilliant Trustees and the artists we work with, we’re taking a closer look at the individuals who make everything we do possible.

In this episode, Clare Purcell, Executive Director for Meadow Arts, speaks with BorderLands artist Iwan Bala to learn more about the artist behind the artworks, his longstanding exploration of Welsh cultural identity, and the ideas informing his practice today.

To me art needs to ‘say’ something and not just present a technically beautiful, accomplished ‘object’ that has no message to pass to the viewer beyond itself.

Iwan Bala

Iwan Bala is one of Wales’s most celebrated contemporary artists and is a Welsh speaker. His work explores cultural identity and the cultural cartography of Wales and offers an intellectual journey through the landscapes of memory, language, and Welsh heritage. He creates work using memorised and imagined maps and landscapes, using art as a means of commenting on Welsh culture. His paintings, drawings, and assemblages explore the notion of belonging to a specific place whilst also engaging with the wider world. 

He won the Gold Medal in Fine Art at the National Eisteddfod of Wales in 1997 and the Glyndŵr Award in 1998 for outstanding contributions to the arts in Wales. His work is held in major public collections including the National Museum Wales, the Museum of Modern Art Wales, and the Imperial War Museum. 

Clare: Maps and landscapes as language … Your work frequently uses imagined and memorised maps of Wales as a visual language. How did this approach develop, and what is it about the map that speaks so powerfully to questions of Welsh identity? 

Iwan: I was always interested in maps, looking at maps and creating maps of imagined countries. I suppose it’s because maps can take you somewhere else or help you understand the world you are in. I studied geography for ‘A’ Level and began a course at University in Aberystwyth, before opting out for art foundation. I like the ‘vista’ you can see in maps, medieval maps in particular like the Mappa Mundi in Hereford Cathedral. At the time of its making, Hereford was in Wales!

Clare: The process … You have spoken about reworking older pieces, layering new meaning over old marks. What does it feel like to revisit and overwrite your past work?

Iwan: It is a pragmatic process in a way. Piles of old drawings on Khadi paper in the studio, that either were never shown or will never be shown again. So, it’s a kind of re-cycling, of not adding more ‘stuff’ to the environment! It’s also easier in some ways to build on a foundation that is already there. Though the newly finished work may have metamorphosed into something totally new, there are still vestiges of mark-making from the past. Pentimento I think it’s called, like a palimpsest.

Clare: Welsh language and visual art … Your works often feature Welsh words or phrases. How central is the Welsh language to your visual practice? 

Iwan: It’s my first language, and I think in Cymraeg first, so reacting to work as it progresses and as it gives me ideas, naturally the titles or ‘message’ comes to me in Cymraeg first.

Clare: BorderLands … you are one of the artists featured in our current exhibition, BorderLands, at Hay Castle, located on the Welsh Border, can you tell us more about the theme of borders and how you feel the show speaks to your artistic interests?

Iwan: I was pleased to be asked to participate. Hay-on-Wye, or Y Gelli Gandryll as it is in Cymraeg, is a very particular and interesting place, straddling a geographic, political and cultural ‘border’. I think it is an ideal place to exhibit work that seeks to question issues of identity, belonging and colonisation.

Clare: The next generation … Having lectured and taught for many years, what do you hope young artists today can take from your body of work, and what do you hope to learn from them?

Iwan: It is a precarious world we live in, more so now than ever because of climate change of course. I hope young artists will address these issues we face, I know many do. To me art needs to ‘say’ something and not just present a technically beautiful, accomplished ‘object’ that has no message to pass to the viewer beyond itself. I learn from students of the past who have gone on to become artists in their own right, about a continuity of creative endeavour. I see some of my influence on them as a teacher, or of my body of work, transformed into individual authentic voices of their own.

BorderLands (15 May – 31 August 2026) is presented in partnership with Hay Castle Trust. Made possible thanks to funding from The de Laszlo Foundation, The Colwinston Charitable Trust 30th Anniversary Fund and Arts Council England.