We are delighted to announce the four artists who have been commissioned to develop new work as part of Coed Coexist, a creative project exploring our complex relationships with woodland and landscape on Pen Llŷn and beyond. Following a nationwide open call, the selected artists will work closely with local communities, woodlands, and histories over the coming months, developing thoughtful, site-sensitive responses that reflect on the coexistence between people, trees, and place.
The commissioned artists are:
Gabriella Rhodes + Benjamin Green
Jo Alexander
Hedydd Ioan
Alison Neighbour
We are grateful to Gwynedd Council for their support in helping make these artist commissions possible, enabling creative engagement with woodlands and communities across Pen Llŷn.
PROJECT BACKGROUND
Coed Coexist is a project initiated by Pen Llŷn artists Junko Mori & John Egan in partnership with Plas Glyn-y-Weddw. The essence of the project draws our attention to trees and woodland, seeking out wider connections, desires and reliance on these ecosystems while connecting community, creativity and environmental stewardship. The project as a whole aspires to celebrate the local area and the communities based in Pen Llŷn.
Utilising solely fallen or felled trees from the peninsula and Winllan woods at Plas Glyn-y-Weddw, Coed Coexist will showcase new creative work alongside public and community engagement in and around Plas Glyn-y-Weddw. Following the symposium which took place in September 2024, there has been an open invitation to creative practitioners who have links to Pen Llŷn and the wider Gwynedd area to make new work for an exhibition in 2026.
This invitation has included collecting wood from a large beech tree that fell in a storm at Plas Glyn-y-Weddw earlier in 2024. This tree and its wood are central to the Coed Coexist project both symbolically and physically and the aspiration of the project is to inspire and give a platform to the craftsmanship and ingenuity of creatives and thinkers connected to the area. All those who have expressed an interest or taken wood can take part in the exhibition taking place May - July 2026.
Gabriella Rhodes + Benjamin Green
Gabriella Rhodes (b. 1993, Stoke-on-Trent) is a material-led artist based on the Llŷn Peninsula, North Wales. She graduated from Manchester School of Art in 2018 with a BA (Hons) in Three-Dimensional Design and is currently remotely studying for an MA in Regenerative Design at Central Saint Martins. Her research focuses on regenerative material practices in clay, reinterpreting vernacular earth-building techniques of North-West Wales through a bioregional studio practice.
Gabriella has exhibited nationally, including London Craft Week 2024/25 and Artistiaid Ifainc Cymru at MOMA Machynlleth. She has received awards and residencies from Guldagergaard Ceramic Research Centre (Denmark), A-B Projects (Los Angeles), and the Arts Council of Wales. Most recently, she presented her MA research at the Jan van Eyck Regenerate! symposium, exploring place-based material practice that recognises earth materials as active collaborators within dynamic ecological systems rather than passive waste or resources.
Benjamin Green is a visual artist, educator and researcher based in Manchester, UK. His practice combines elements of artist film, poetic documentary and landscape photography to engage with the thematic intersections of place and identity. Born in Derbyshire in 1995, he has close family links to the post-industrial North Midlands and coastal North Wales and is frequently inspired by the histories, topographies and narratives of both landscapes in his work. His research has focused on radical approaches to collaborative non-fiction filmmaking practice; co-creating original work both with participants and the landscape itself, treating each as an equal collaborative partner. The recent focus of his practice has been using natural approaches to analogue image making as a method for exploring, understanding and working with(in), place. Benjamin is a lecturer on the BA (Hons) Filmmaking course at SODA, Manchester School of Art, where he is also studying for a PhD by practice.
Gabriella Rhodes and Benjamin Green have proposed an installation for the Coed Coexist Commission, which will explore the connection between analogue filmmaking and sculptural practice, focusing on themes of cohabitation, co-creation and multi-species thinking.
Gabriella will create three sculptures using straw and clay-rich soils from Pen Llŷn. These sculptures will reference the local landscape and clom-building traditions. Material samples and information will be displayed alongside the sculptures.
Benjamin will create two 16mm films and incorporate processed film strips into the installation, interacting with the sculptures and accumulating dust and scratches over time. An ambient soundscape combining field recordings and projector sounds will enhance the multisensory experience.
Both artists aim to encourage reflection on the interdependence of material, ecological, and cultural systems, using sustainable methodologies.
Jo Alexander
Jo Alexander is a multidisciplinary artist and craftsperson from Ynys Môn. Her creative practice has evolved from a scientific background in marine biology and zoology, and a career in traditional green woodwork and chair making, for which she has received many awards. For the last 15 years, since receiving her first class Fine Art BAhons from Glyndwr university, Jo has exhibited work in the form of drawing, painting and printing, sculpture, installation and poetry. As well as focusing on her own creative practice, Jo has initiated and led several outdoor sculpture exhibitions and community art events that celebrate the local area.
Jo Alexander’s proposal focuses on using storm-fallen beech wood, from Plas Glyn-y-Weddw to create a body of work, including a Welsh stick chair, side chair, stools, sculptural forms, and vessels. Jo plans to utilize all parts of the beech wood, including roots, bark, cleft timber, and sawdust. The project aims to explore nature, creativity, and environmental themes, as well as engage with the local green woodwork community.
Jo also plans to write haikus inspired by the beech wood and its elements, creating a collection of poetic observations. The project outcomes include furniture, sculptural forms, vessels, bark rubbings, drawings, prints, collaborative spoons and utilitarian objects, photographic documentation, and a book of haikus.
Hedydd Ioan
Hedydd Ioan is an artist from the Nantlle Valley working across film, music, and performance. His practice spans multiple media, with a particular interest in the spaces that emerge through the combination of image, sound, and live work. He recently completed a year as one of the resident artists on the Nature Forever project, working with rare species in north-west Wales. In late 2024, he released his debut album under the name Skylark. Through his work co-running the Inois music label, Hedydd explores the power of the artist to give voice, platform, and space for independent creators to produce unique and alternative work.
“Over a century ago, my great grandfather went around collecting the names of all the ships in Pen Llŷn, many built with wood from Pen Llŷn. I have been aware of our family connection with this area and have been eager to try to explore it.
It's my roots. ' is a proposed installation and performance that compares the mycorrhizal network that trees use to connect with other plants and trees, with our connection as individuals with the land and our ancestors. The point of contact between the two is the use of roots - the trees share information through a fungus on the roots; and us as people looking at our personal and family roots. I hope to be able to offer a new perspective to the ideas that have developed with Coed Coexist by looking at the underground connection that trees share with each other, and how that is similar to our relationship with our history.
The proposed work will include film, poetry and samples recorded with a Geophone (which records underground sounds) and performance." - Hedydd Ioan
Alison Neighbour
Alison Neighbour is a multi-disciplinary artist and scenographer, working across performance, installation and social engagement. Her practice seeks to bring audiences into deeper relationship with the natural world through the creation of ritual moments, immersive journeys, interactive installations, and re-framings of spaces. The embodied sensory relationship between audience, place, and story is always at the heart of her work, which most often occurs in public spaces and invites accidental encounter.
Alison was recently part of the Future Wales Fellowship, supported by Arts Council Wales, Natural Resources Wales & Peak Cymru. Other recent work includes large scale participatory performances and installations created with National Trust; Creative Folkestone, and as part of the Kent National Landscape & Pas de Calais UNESCO Geopark bid.
"A nest structure, built onsite, co-created with the materials of this place; with the more than human inhabitants; and with visitors. The nest is a place to be held within the woods, a sanctuary for human visitors to find a space for co-existance with each other and with that beyond themselves, for looking at the tree canopy and the sky beyond, for feeling the soft earth beneath them, itself full of networks connecting their bodies to others; for spending an hour watching the journey of a tiny bug. The space is large enough to accomodate several human bodies sitting or lying next to each other. It is tactile and sensory, a part of the woods as if it has always been there, and yet a surprise, a portal into being able to slow down and to look and feel more deeply.
The nest is built over the course of a fortnight, in situ within the land it has come from, with invitations to visitors to contribute. As it is woven together, it creates new networks, homes and pathways for more than human inhabitants of the woodland, and networks of story and connection for the humans who co-build it. The co-building allows for the story of the work to be shared and re-told both within and beyond the site, and for the stories that participants bring to also be woven in- the site and materials lead and the artist facilitates: we all co-exist in the making and sharing.
I hope the work could reach a wider audience by inviting people into the making process - into tactile engagement with choosing and arranging materials, and the storytelling that emerges through that process. This occuring totally onsite over several days is itself a conversation starter - making with the openness to passersby engaging with the process either through a question or short conversation, or by getting their hands into the wood and the soil, or even by them making an offering of a story or a material to the structure.
At the moment the form of the structure is loose - I feel sure it will be round, it will feel safe, and it will be made entirely of materials from the site and most likely woven, but there I want the site and materials to lead me to discover what they will become. I hope that the structure will provide genuine habitat for other creatures, and I would like to collaborate with those more knowledgeable than myself to ensure I get that right. I imagine there being words carved in Welsh and English that invite visitors to look a little differently.
This project follows on perfectly from my Future Wales Fellowship, through which I have been exploring material and ritual of the land, sea and sky, and creating spaces, language and journeys in which to re-frame our relationship with the rest of the natural world. This would be a great opportunity to create a public artwork that builds on the year of research I have just undertaken. I have been mostly based in Eryri and a little on Pen Llyn for this Fellowship and I would like to continue to deepen my relationship with this place." - Alison Neighbour