A conversation with photographer Aisling Edwards, historian Ydwena Jones and Tudor Rhys Etchells - curator of In Between Edges

Part of Ffoto Cymru 2026 (https://www.ffotogallery.org/ffoto-cymru-2026-about), Wales' International Festival of Photography

Join photographer Aisling Edwards and historian Ydwena Jones, whose family resided on the Epynt Plateau, in conversation with the curator of In Between Edges, Tudor Rhys Etchells to discuss how the area has been represented and how history is traced in the land itself.

In Between Edges is a group show that includes Aisling Edward’s work Mark Time | Epynt 85 Mlynedd: a documentation of Epynt that has been owned by the Military of Defence since 1940, when the local families were forced to leave.

The experience of the photographer, therefore, alongside a previous inhabitant will consider how observation, memory, history and war reflect the story of this largely unknown area of land and its social significance to Wales.

*Doors open 18:45

About the speakers:

Aisling Edwards is a Welsh born artist working across photography and sculpture exploring how landscapes are controlled, altered and remembered. In 2024, she independently approached the Ministry of Defence and secured access to photograph on Sennybridge Training Area as civilian resulting in Mark Time | Epynt 85 Mylnedd. Mark Time explores land in preparation for work, documenting traces of military activity rather than soldiers themselves. Edwards questioned how land continues to support life, retain histories and bear the marks of preparation without ever becoming a battlefield itself.

Her works have shown at Milan International Photography, The British Embassy in Rome, the Royal Society of Arts, Canwood Gallery and Sculptural Gardens. In October, Edwards will travel to Germany to attend the Adam Broomberg Photobook Masterclass through Werksatt Institute, Berlin. The 8-month Masterclass programme will see Mark Time’s development into a Photobook Dummy, with an essay by writer, curator and photographer, Gerry Badger.

Historian Ydwena Jones, whose father resided on the Epynt Plateau before the War Office acquired the land in 1940 to provide an area for firing large artillery on the brink of WW2. Jones retells his story through her involvement in Grŵp Epynt: together with Major Andy Butcher MBE, Graziers, Epynt Way and local community representatives, together they organise exhibitions and tours of the land's history. In 2025, Grŵp Epynt displayed the slates with the original slates of the original Welsh names of the 54 requisitioned farms at The Royal Welsh Show, now sited at original locations on the MoD Sennybridge Training Area.

Tudor Rhys Etchells is co-curator of BayArt gallery. He uses the photograph to challenge fictions created by legal systems. Working within such a bureaucracy in his previous role as a human rights lawyer inspires his closeness to the document and the brutally mundane. For him, the photographic medium, with its own cumbersome structures of viewing and representing, appears the best match for understanding processes that construct the imagined norms of our society. Embracing photography’s performative element, he deconstructs our conceptions of visual knowledge. He achieved a Distinction in MA Documentary Photography at the University of South Wales during which he was awarded the Reginald Salisbury grant.

Description supplied by the event organiser.