 body of water - seaweeds, a cat concierge, and cold April waters. Mawddach. I do not know where to begin to speak of the most enchanting, intense, and peaceful two weeks we have ever experienced working creatively. This was our first residency, and we had high expectations of ourselves: to film all footage for our poetry film “body of water”. body of water explores the body as an ecosystem, both vulnerable and robust. We began some very intuitive and raw initial filming during a weekend in Barmouth last year, and were captivated by the calm beaches and the complex tidal rhythms of the Mawddach Estuary. The idea for this project was born upon Barmouth bridge, looking down into the slowly revealed world of moonjellyfish and sealettuce. So we could not have been more thrilled to have been accepted for the residency! Maybe you are asking yourself, what is a poetry film? For us it is an exploration of what happens when poetry moves beyond the page and into images, sound, voice and performance. For us, poetry film is a chimerical being: part cinema, part ritual to honour our environment, part direct action against patriarchy and extractive capitalism. It is a moment where poems swim out to sea and become an incantation and take you into a realm where everything is possible. The residency offered us such a unique opportunity: to dive deep into this ancient landscape, to get to know every lichen patch on a first-name basis, to become one with the water, to hear a goldfinch song for the first time, to be swallowed, swamped with all the colours of sea-mist. Being so close to the water deeply called to something within us. It took us out of our compulsive productivity and reacquainted us with a rhythm that has become strange to us: tidal. To live in synchronicity with the moon and the sea.
Waking up at dawn to catch the soft pink cloudlight, simply going for a swim midday because the currents are at their calmest, and the forests of bladderwrack are most cooperative for filming. It felt as if the environment was our collaborator, part of our artistic team. The gorse an unpaid actor, the wind the director, and Moritz and I are desperately trying to capture just a fraction of all this incredible, feral beauty. The waves swept more and more stories of selkies, sea spirits, and shape-shifting beings into our dreams. Everything was unfolding, opening up within us, and the story we were trying to tell for so long could finally arrive. We were learning the language of our story, how to speak of and with a body constantly flowing, changing. It certainly helped that Toby, the resident purring concierge, was always there to warm our feet after long days of filming, while Jake and Scarlett kept us wonderfully fed with the most delicious (and pretty) pumpkin and rhubarb. We left feeling so inspired by the care and imagination of their work, and so grateful for the generosity, warmth, and fabulousness with which they held the space around us. By the end of the two weeks, we had finished filming body of water, which would never have been possible without the residency. But more than that, we had been given the rare and beautiful chance to live inside the work: to follow the weather, the tides, the seaweed, the strange little sparks at the edge of the water. We had time to try things, permission to fail, to laugh, to be soaked through, to let the film reveal itself rather than force it into being. We left with wet sandy shoes, full hearts, and a hard drive full of seaweed, seamoss. body of water has not been made in Mawddach, but with it. C.Moss Collective website / instagram Kate MacAlister Moritz V:3rës
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 Graduate Residency Award Winner 2025 Mawddach Residency was my first ever residency. I arrived very excited for time and space to explore a new landscape and to reconnect with drawing and painting after devoting my final year [of BA] to ceramics. I wanted to allow myself the freedom to really get lost within the experience. I did find myself getting lost—quite literally. In the first week, on my walks outside the studio, I would set off in one direction, second-guess myself, turn around, and end up a ways off from where I had planned. It was all new and exciting with so much to find and see, so I was always glad to be wherever I was. Though when this sense of disorientation carried into the studio, it felt different. I began working with familiar patterns and movements in my return to drawing and painting, but they no longer felt right for me. It took a couple of days to realize that was where I really needed to find a new path and approach things differently. I was drawn to the twisted, gnarled oaks surrounding the residency. I started by studying their trunks and roots, which slowly, in my mind, shifted into figures and hands. The trees felt like embodiments of endurance and adaptation, ideas that have become the core of my work. After being diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis the winter before graduating, I have been thinking about how to sustain my practice over time. The trees felt like a true reflection of that, adapting to their conditions and growing in unexpected ways. It was also such a pleasure to share the studio with my fellow resident, Freyja Needle. I was inspired by her perspective on the environment, what she collected from it, and how she translated it into her work. Watching her use of ink encouraged me to open a bottle of sumi ink I had brought with me, but never used before. On my final day, I made a series of quick studies of the twisted trees, working with a brush and allowing the uncertainty and immediacy of this new medium to capture the gesture and energy of the oaks. This process was, by far, the one I found most exciting.
I am grateful to Jake and Scarlett for awarding me the opportunity to attend, and I feel very fortunate to have experienced such a visually rich and supportive environment. In the transition from graduate student to artist, my time at Mawddach felt like a cocoon stage within the development of my practice. By the end of the two weeks, I had developed a deeper sense of both the place and my process, and I had managed to find my way back into something by taking the unfamiliar way. Alex Morante website  Graduate Residency Award Winner 2025 I was so excited when I found out I was selected for the Graduate Residency Award, it felt like the light at the end of the postgrad tunnel to have the opportunity to spend two uninterrupted weeks in such a beautiful area of Wales I used to visit as a child. Trying to balance my practice with a full time job was proving difficult but having Mawddach as my first residency allowed me to get back in the flow of making; no distractions just fully immersed in nature. Just what I needed. Upon arrival at Morfa Mawddach station with a cargo bike packed full of materials I ‘might’ need, Alex Morante (my co-resident who was coincidentally on the same train) and I were greeted by the wonderful Jake and Scarlett. Feeling immediate comfort as they welcomed usinto their home. And so it began. I didn’t have much of a plan, just to explore and see where the landscape took me. Waking up to the view of the estuary the next morning made me motivated for the day ahead. I hadn’t planned where the day might take me, as I was slightly overwhelmed by the options after spending the evening scanning maps and brochures of the area. So, I decided to just get lost…resulting in a lot of pushing my bike up steep hills and tiny footpaths. I knew it had been a successful day when I returned with almost an entire seagull skeleton and lots of driftwood. Getting lost isn’t so bad. Wading through mud, internally reciting ‘were going on a bear hunt…’ Stumble, tripping across a family of abandoned sheep carcases. Watching the birds’ dynamics from the kitchen window with a coffee. Boiled eggs by Arthog waterfalls. On the move monoprints. Freezing cold swims. Undulating forms of the estuary. Solo pints with my sketchbook. An abundance of bones. Semi dangerous rock clambering, trying to shortcut footpaths to avoid turning back on myself. Conversations about death and God? Scarlett’s rib cage shaped pasta. Eerie chunky sheep and emo horses. My first experience cycling on seaweed. The curious sternum bone. Albums which will forever be associated with Mawaddah. Mine and Alex’s combined pile of fairytale books on the studio windowsill. Watching the changing weather and tides. Crying over sheep multiple times. No pressure, endless drawing, collecting and creating.
I left Mawddach Residency full of wonder and inspiration, my desk is now spilling with drawings, sketchbooks and collections. Thank you Jake Scarlett and Toby the cat for the most wonderful experience, I am forever grateful. Freyja Needle website  I arrived at the residency with a ridiculous amount of ‘just in case’ equipment including a variety of cameras, films, chemistry and printing without a darkroom materials. Rather than work on a specific project themes or ideas, I wanted the freedom and opportunity to experiment and creatively respond to what the light and the landscape shared with me. When I initially read about the residency, I was particularly struck by the studio space and the incredible estuary landscape on the other side of the studio windows. I thought how amazing it would be to transform the studio into a camera obscura and project the outside environment into a room that has hosted and enabled so much creativity inspired by that landscape. During my second week at the residency and a dream about making the camera obscura, a day with suitable light and weather conditions arrived. Using tinfoil to create a makeshift blackout, the camera obscura appeared across the back of the studio wall and ceiling– the landscape projected upside down. Standing inside the room as a camera, in the middle of a living breathing photograph – watching the estuary water ripple across the wall, was such a special experience and amazing to be able to show/share it with my co-resident, Katie King and our host Scarlett. On my first morning I set up tiny pin hole cameras, made from plastic film canisters, placed at intervals along the estuary. In mid-February it felt like a leap of faith to attempt to make solargraphs – using the light from the sun to record its passage across the estuary. I took them down on the last evening at the residency with no idea if anything had been recorded. I was delighted to find a set of mysterious abstract images including strange globes of grey light. I spent time each day exploring the estuary and local area on foot, capturing images on 35mm film, polaroid and my large format pinhole camera. I was particularly struck by the layers of texture in the landscape and the movement of light. A highlight of the residency was an evening spent at the Dragon Theatre in Barmouth, listening to the local Dragon Storytellers and Ffion Phillips. In their folk tales, they talked about ‘thin spaces’ the transitional places that exist between this world and the next. Thie idea of and interpretation of ‘thin spaces’ particularly resonated with me. In the months leading up to the residency I’ve been working on a book ‘Into the trees’, using time in the darkroom as a meditative tool to creatively remember and reimagine the sensations of time spent in nature. In the Japanese Art of Forest Bathing, Dr Li Quin (1982) describes a deeper sensory awareness of nature. He states: ‘we know this deep in our bones. It is like an intuition, or an instinct - a feeling that is sometimes hard to describe. In Japanese, we have a word for those feelings that are too deep for words: yugen. Yugen gives us a profound sense of the beauty and mystery of the universe. It is about this world but suggests something beyond it’ . Chatting together with Katie, we felt the studio space itself could be a ‘thin space’ – a place that brought about shifts in our perception – a space of awe and inspiration. During the residency I began to explore the idea of capturing and creating thin spaces using light – something mentioned by the storytellers of things glimpsed often out of the corner of an eye. Photograms – incorporating found objects and materials into my images, is part of my photographic practice. Capturing the landscape on film,
I wrapped cellophane around my polaroid camera lens to fracture and diffuse the light. Developing my 35mm film by hand at the residency, I experimented with film soup (disrupting the development process and film surface), as a result patches of white light found their way onto my negatives. Sharing the studio space with Katie and watching her textile practice at work, stray bit of material including fabric interfacing found their way into my film scanner and provided other opportunities to create and explore light. I began to test out ideas and explore images at the residency, using cyanotype printing and toning techniques – packets of matcha tea bought from the coop supermarket in Barmouth produced a beautiful pink/purple tone that seemed to capture the otherness of the landscape. The residency was such a special time – the freedom to create and reflect away from the routine of daily life was such a gift. I will always remember my time there. Thank you Scarlett, Jake and Toby the cat, for making me so welcome. Thank you also Kaite King – it was such a pleasure to get to know you, have an opportunity to watch your process and amazing textile creations grow in our studio space. Back home from the residency I’m excited to creatively remember and revisit Mawddach in my darkroom using the negatives and to further explore the ideas inspired by my stay. Jo Stapleton website Mawddach…
Out of love, respect and adoration I have shortened the residency to first name only, my Madonna, Beyonce, Britney. I am indebted to Scarlett, Jake, Toby and my wonderful co-AIR Jo Stapleton for creating the space for such a productive, insightful and exploratory two weeks in Eyri national park. I began my trip with a particular agenda; Go slow, play with texture in my textile practice and play with abstracting layers from a style of ‘almost touching / almost intimate’ between panelled layers to an intersection and interweaving of layers. I did all these things and more and spent my time reading and thinking about The Tain, the Mabinogion (which I can’t pronounce yet) and other local fairy and dragon lore. My highlight was a visit from Ffion Watkin Philips who came to tell Welsh stories at Barmouth Dragon Theatre with other local storytellers. Understanding the cultural memory of fairy stories and recognising the way this also presses across the UK really meant a lot to me. My practice involves textiles but also animation and ritual based installations that move between nonsense and trying to link into a universal experience. Increasingly I have a desire to echo in more of UK’s pagan heritage. So to meet the fairies head-on in the local woodlands on my walks to Arthog waterfall, to fantasise about dragons buried deep under wells under local mountains, and to look out at the estuary each day disappearing into the mist and the mountains, has been incredibly informative. As slow practices go, my residency work is not yet finished but I expect it to be ready for my show Moon Witual which opens IMMINENTLY, (yelp) in London at Batsford Gallery on 21 March 2026 - 22 March 2026. The show especially features a question I have been toying with over the last 6 months in thinking about our planet’s Moon being something between a poetic mirror and an active Kali type force on our lives. It is a public participatory performance piece that also includes an archive-image film called 18.6 Crash and new textile works made during my time at Mawddach. Katie King website Mawddach is very special to me as it was my very first artist residency.
I carefully selected this place after finding about Draw Brighton and following their monthly online artist interviews for almost a year. There, I discovered the work of our hosts Jake and Scarlett, and subsequently the posts from artists who had stayed at Mawddach in the past. Everything I could read and see sparked more than just interest in me; it created a genuine connection, and my instinct was right. Jessica, (my co resident who met me on the train halfway through our journey) and I were greeted with open arms by Scarlett and Jake on the station platform, and I knew right away that we were going to have two extraordinary weeks. Our welcome dinner felt more like a meal between old friends who hadn't seen each other in a long time, and from the very first day, I felt completely at home, facing the sea, surrounded by nature, with an incredible view from the studio , which whatever the weather, made me want to curl up by the window and imprint in my mind every inch my eyes could take in. Before leaving home, I decided that the residency would be two weeks of research, exploration, experimentation, and immersing myself in the place and the present moment. I savored every second; our dinners at our hosts' home after modeling for the portrait class, my visit to their future school, fish and chips with the girls before drawing their friend Enfys from life in a church, sharing curry and fantastic anecdotes with their friend and artist Kate Boucher, feeding dozens of birds every morning at the kitchen window, and sharing hot chocolate outside to celebrate the first day of Imbolc. I loved this freedom to settle in the studio to paint, draw, sculpt, or in the living room to read a book (which I was never able to finish because there were so many choices that I started several at the same time), to go to the woods or to the beach to collect branches, leaves and shells, or simply to admire the view. Sometimes I wandered alone to clear my head, or with Jess to chat about anything and everything, to share ideas over brunch in town, or simply to marvel at the beauty and tranquility of the place. Every seashell, sketch, and thought is now a priceless treasure that transports me, for a fleeting moment, to this little corner of Wales. I learned something very special during those two weeks at the Mawddach Residency: the importance of a supportive environment where shared ideas are celebrated and respected. Even now, every morning I look at the lithograph and the message on the back, a gift from Scarlett and Jake, to convince myself that this adventure wasn't a dream, and I regret not having followed through on my initial idea to hide in one of the wardrobes, and never to return to France. Gemini.H website I feel like I should explain why we applied for this residency first before telling you about our time there together. Freddie is 6 years old and Autistic with limited verbal capabilities and delayed global learning development. He uses echolalia, which is a form of mimicking linguistic scripts from things he loves (namely the TV show Hey Duggee) to communicate his needs and feelings. He began going to mainstream school in 2024 and since then we have been in a daily battle with the local authorities and educational government to get him the assistance he needs. He was often ostracised from the classroom and deemed ‘incapable’ of joining in. I waded through multiple frustrating meetings , phonecalls and a mountain of red tape paperwork to keep fighting for Freddie to be seen for his strengths and not his weaknesses. Freddie was sent home from school more often than not, so I involved him in my work and art practice on a daily basis. We used art as a way to regulate, communicate and express ourselves. I noticed that Freddie was suddenly making a lot more progress with his communication and having a lot less meltdowns the more I involved him into my art practice. Through our art sessions we were able to evolve his language in ways that the school language therapist had deemed unfavourable. He learned his colours and shapes. He learned his numbers and how to write them. He loves the sensory aspect of creating art together. As time went on I thought I was going to end up having to fully home-school Freddie (and we were just about to take the local authority to court to have the right to do so). Therefore I applied for this residency, (it is such a rarity to find a residency that is parent and child friendly) in hopes that we could have some time away together to connect, build some core memories exploring the natural surroundings and having dedicated time to work on art work together. That brings us to the residency itself! We arrived in the evening of January 9th (the day before my 43rd Birthday) with my husband Stephen also in tow to help us settle in. It was too dark to see much of the estuary but the sky was blistered with stars as we turned the path and parked outside of the residency building which was festooned with lights. We were kindly greeted by Scarlet and Jake, then helped to settle into the accommodation on the 3rd floor. We had a wonderful time sharing stories and eating a home prepared welcome meal with them that evening. On my birthday we awoke to the sheer majesty of the estuary. Incredible pillowy clouds filled the sky reflected in the water below. We could hear the sheep baaing as they chewed grass on the hill behind the house and we were visited by blue tits, jays and robins on the windowsill of the kitchen bird feeder. It truly felt like we had stepped into a Studio Ghibli film. We took the day to explore the area a little and get some birthday treats. I absolutely love bridges and had to drive across the rickety wooden pallet bridge from Penmaenpool over the estuary to Barmouth. We finished off the day with fish and chips whilst watching the sunset over the sea. On the third day we said “Goodbye!” to my husband and decided to settle into a rhythm as a twosome. We quickly found that getting up around 5:30am in the pitch black dead of winter and shuffling into the living room with a cup of coffee to read under a blanket was a great way to start the day. By 7am we were in the studio beginning to set out some materials and ideas for our art practice while the sun arose. At 10am we would pack some snacks and pick somewhere to go for a big hike. Once we walked over the railway bridge to Barmouth. Most of the time we enjoyed going to Coed-Y-Brenin in the Snowdonia National Forest and picked one of the pre-designated hiking routes from the map to try. I became a little obsessed with the moss in those woods. The smell and the spongy texture of the moss was so delightful. We also loved to throw pinecones into the mini waterfalls laced around the river pathways and race them to the bottom. After each hike Freddie said “Time for cake!” As he got used to the fact that we would be famished and ready to find a bakery to raid. We often ended up in Dolgellau on the way back to the residency for pasties and sausage rolls. After our hike we would head back to the studio full of fresh air and pasties and ready to sit down and have some quiet time with our art materials.
Freddie had his own desk in the studio and worked away on his artwork. Sometimes making models out of play doh, sometimes using paints and water colour pencils. On one of the first nights that we were there we heard an owl out in the trees. Then I found a book of Owl photographs and it instantly became the subject theme for us. I had brought some willow sticks with us and some lantern building papers, so I set to work drawing owls and creating an owl pattern to make a giant lantern from. Freddie drew the most incredible Owl which I had to get tattooed on my arm as soon as we returned home. As the residency progressed and I was able to concentrate on just exploring and creating artwork with Freddie, his communication and language started to show signs of improving. He has so much capability yet struggles to get the correct words to the surface and with creative intervention, we’ve proved that he is able to express himself given the space and time to do so. In the second week of the residency we were joined by my writer friend Ali for 2 days and later my sister Sophie for 2 days. This was not only great to explore and share the experience with an additional person but this sometimes gave me a little respite as Freddie needs 24/7 supervision as he is unaware of dangers and difficulties. Halfway through the residency I was invited to sit for the Draw online portrait drawing session as a model. Jake kindly asked me a few questions about my artistic practice and how I approach my work. Then I had to do one of the hardest things ever, which is to SIT STILL! Luckily, I was able to sew in the first session and the incredibly talented artists who tuned in to draw me created some phenomenal works, so unique and expressive with each of their approaches, I was really honoured to have been able to sit for them as a subject. Towards the last few days of the residency I became a little emotional about leaving. I felt like I had wholeheartedly found a rhythm and space that accepted myself and my kid in a way that I hadn’t before. The accommodation was beautiful and I was truly going to miss watching the sunlight rise and dim each day over the estuary, mountains and sea giving way to vast night skies. Myself and Freddie have learned so much from this concerted time to concentrate on creativity and communication together in a way that we had not had the space or time to do so before. I’m taking so much of the rhythm and pace that I felt at the residency back to our daily life with us. We can’t thank Scarlett and Jake enough for being such great hosts (and incredible artists in their own right too). We will always have a little piece of Mawddach in our hearts. Sorrell Kerrison website When I think about my time at Mawddach Residency it feels like some magical dream that's buried itself deep inside my mind that seems so incomprehensible that I begin to question whether it was in fact a dream. I do however have evidence of time passing in this surreal environment which feel like artefacts I must treat with white gloves and glass cabinets.
This residency allowed me to spend 2 whole weeks uninterrupted to fully immerse myself in the tough winter climate of Wales and gather as many visual references I could find. Working a full time job can often make you lose the wood for the trees as a natural creative and push myself out of my comfort zone and gather plans and projects for the future was truly an experience I will be forever grateful to have. I sat on many soggy rocks with my charcoal stick and sketchbook, trying my best to capture the landscape unfolding around me. With the light changing every 5 minutes with the racing winter clouds, my retinas couldn’t take it all in, looking to the right, then to the left, back to the right, behind and repeat, giving myself whiplash in the rain trying to make sense of the scenes unravelling with each step. If this was a movie, I sure as hell was the director rapidly losing control of the gaffer. With such peace and quiet and an enormous sense of well being, my internal monologue seemed to be on its own journey, my body merely a vessel to carry my train of thought and my camera. Most of these thoughts have run amok within those welsh hills, maybe I dropped them in the waterfall, or in the tree where I found the skull of a sheep and saw the dance of 2 king fishers. Wherever those thoughts have ended up I am sure they will come back to me as I continue to process my time at Mawddach. Natasha Motaghi website  It was after 11 p.m. when I arrived at Morfa Mawddach Station. The last hour of that seventeen-hour train journey, I sat with my eyes pressed close to the window, trying to look into the passing black. I saw only the waxing moon, moving slowly in and out of view, hanging low above an invisible sea. The next morning was like unwrapping a gift, only the gift was a vast, expansive landscape, with wind and sun and clouds rolling over distant hills. The next two weeks went by in a blur. I walked across the hills, felt rain and wind and cold, and ran down slippery slopes, afraid of an approaching storm. I made stacks and stacks of drawings, trying to find a way in. It wasn’t until the last few days, when I went up the hill, that I felt a sense of calm.
Here were trees dancing in a slow choreography formed by a hundred years of salt and wind. I sat myself down on the moss with big sheets of paper, and looked. I'd come down for lunch, and go up again in the afternoon, spending days drawing the same trees. While I feel most at home in my practice when it is less about observation and more about memory, I found it helpful to make these sustained drawings of the dancing trees. They taught me that drawing is a form of attention: by unhurrying myself and spending time in the landscape, I heard crows, felt the wind, and noticed the flies on whose home I was sitting. I’ve found that these memories of journey and place will often move into drawings of their own; drawings about how wet my feet were, or the family of crows above me. The residency helped me understand that I seem to want to describe the breadth of the landscape and my memory of it, and that making longer drawings is a helpful part of that process. I left with a stack of drawings, a full heart, and a long list of haphazard memories that I’m sure will find their way to paper some day. Thank you Mawddach, Jake, Scarlett, soft moths, curly oaks, and much loved Toby. Maria Fraaije website |
