Creative ambassador

Eleri Mills

Montgomeryshire artist Eleri Mills, who is currently studying for an MA in Fine Art at Aberystwyth University’s School of Art, has won the 2010/11 Creative Wales Ambassador Award.

Eleri was nominated for the award, which includes a prize of £25,000, by the Ruthin Craft Centre with whom she has had a long standing working relationship.

During the summer of 2011 the Centre will provide Eleri with a studio workshop space which will allow her to contribute towards the Centre’s education programme.

In 2012 Eleri will take up the invitation to be a visiting artist at Columbia University, New York. This University works closely with the museums and arts community in New York and there are distinct lecture possibilities at related institutes in Baltimore and Chicago.

Following this, Eleri’s work will be featured at the SOFA (Sculpture Objects & Functional Art) New York 2012 exposition.

En exhibition of prints produced by Eleri as part of her MA course will be held during May 2011 at the Aberystwyth School of Art Galleries.

Robert Meyrick, Head of the School of Art, said: We are delighted for Eleri and offer her our warm congratulations. She is an especially deserving recipient of this Award and the fantastic opportunity it provides her to work, lecture and exhibit in New York. Eleri is a consummate artist and an excellent choice to serve as a Creative Ambassador for Wales. As a postgraduate student of printmaking, she has already made a significant and valued contribution to our research community.

Her work magically evokes landscape and the enduring history and feel of place, time and myth in delicate stitch and pigment.

She has exhibited widely in the UK and abroad since the late 1970s, including at the Museums of Modern Art Kyoto and Tokyo, Museu Textil d'Indumentaria, Barcelona and the Museo Nacional de Artes Decorativas, Madrid; and at international expositions SOFA Chicago and Collect at the V&A with RCC supported by Wales Arts International and Arts Council of Wales.

The Creative Wales Ambassador Awards are made by nomination and bring together a Wales based host, with an international dimension provided by an the artist and the host institution in Wales liaising with a partner outside Wales.

The Creative Wales Ambassador Award was one of 19 prizes worth more than £330,000 announced by the Arts Council of Wales on Tuesday 16 November.

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