´óÏó´«Ã½

Haverfordwest-born actor Christian Bale has scooped the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for his role in The Fighter at the 83rd Academy Awards.

Christian Bale as Dicky Eklund in The Fighter © Momentum Pictures

Read more on the 2011 awards, browse a photo gallery of pictures from last night's awards ceremony and see a full list of the winners and nominees.

With the National Eisteddfod celebrating its 150th year this year, a week-long event is being planned in Wrexham from 29 July Stars from in and around Wales are coming together to celebrate the event and to kick-start the Eisteddfod festivities.

Welsh operatic tenor Wynne Evans

The events will include a night of the best Welsh pop songs accompanied by some of the biggest names on the Welsh pop scene, such as Elin Fflur, Bryn Fon and Caryl Parry Jones. The week will also include some of Wales' most popular operatic and classical performers including Shân Cothi, pianist Llŷr Williams and Wynne Evans - he of the Go Compare adverts - plus Wales' answer to the Three Tenors, Aled Hall, Alun Rhys Jenkins and Rhys Meirion.

Eisteddfod organiser Hywel Wyn Edwards told the Daily Post: "I hope the programme will appeal to our regular visitors and those who live within the Eisteddfod catchment area."

As ever the Eisteddfod has tried to cater to all musical tastes during the week, by appealing not only to those who visit the Eisteddfod every year, but to those in the Wrexham area that might not typically attend the festival.

For more information and tickets, which go on sale from 1March, visit the .

Rolf Harris chatting to a miner

Read the rest of this entry

A miracle: I'm to climb a cliff near Blaenau Ffestiniog and it isn't raining. Colin Thomas, the director of our first programme, keeps glancing across the brooding ridges of the Moelwyns. He chews his lip at the sight of dark, churning clouds gathering above Tremadog Bay.

Two professional climbers have anchored themselves to the rock. They tighten the ropes that connect them to the cameraman and me. The camera starts turning, I start climbing and we start filming the first of four programmes that will tell the story of art created in Wales during the 20th century.

As I climb, I struggle to remember when I was last in Blaenau without being drenched. Muscles straining, I reach a rocky promontory from which Augustus John, artistic superstar of Edwardian Britain, painted one of his rare Welsh landscapes.

Colin Thomas has worked out the spot where the great man must have stood his easel, more or less. There's no record, of course, of Augustus having got there by rock-climbing but Colin figured that, visually, me hanging by my fingernails before saying my bit in front of the camera would be a lot more interesting than the sight of me squelching up a boggy Blaenau track.

For me, this is paradise. Art, climbing, Snowdonia, a great story and a wonderful production crew: no-one in the world could have been more fortunate than me on that miraculously dry day just west of Blaenau.

After our exertions - all prolonged by me stumbling over my lines as I tried not to stumble over tangled climbing ropes - we needed tea and found it in a cafe just opposite the Queens Hotel. As I stirred my cup I remembered the warmth and support that the marvellous people of Blaenau had given to the striking miners in 1984/85. It was another reason why I had wanted so much to present these programmes.

Each journey, the length of Wales, which I drove from the southern coalfield to the nuclear power stations that we were picketing in the north during those historic 12 months, reminded me that there can be few more beautiful landscapes anywhere in the world. Those journeys had made me want to paint again, after almost two decades of denouncing 'gallery art' as 'bourgeois individualism'.

Where did I learn such ghastly rhetoric? In London, of course, during the mad, wonderful 1960s when I studied Fine Art (and revolution) at Hornsey, one of the most famous art colleges in the land. As my mother had put it at the time, when I told her I'd given up painting in order to advance the revolutionary cause, 'You're completely cracked, boy. I knew it would happen when you went up to London to live!'

She was completely right, of course. Renouncing painting had led me, via all kinds of tortuous industrial, academic and trade union tracks to the doors of Parliament and ministerial office in government. But, now, 45 years after I'd set-off from Aberdare for London, gripping my portfolio of sixth-form paintings, ´óÏó´«Ã½ Wales was giving me a chance to make amends for being 'cracked' back in 1968 and to contribute to the brave trail pioneered by a handful of art historians who have reminded all who are prepared to listen that the art of Wales in the 20th century is of a quality that compares with art produced anywhere in the world.

Framing Wales begins on Thursday 24 February at 7.30pm on ´óÏó´«Ã½ Two Wales.

A rare set of storyboards, props, costumes and posters from the classic war film Zulu, starring Welsh actors Stanley Baker and Ivor Emmanuel, are to go on show.

The exhibition will be staged at , from Saturday 26 February until Sunday 26 June.

Costumes and props from the film Zulu that will be on show in the exhibition

The Zulu exhibition includes many rare items with objects on display ranging from props such as Chief Cetewayo's shield used in the production to original film shooting schedules, script, production notes, studio contracts, censorship notes, costumes, posters and unpublished photographs taken by the director, Cy Endfield, on the set.

Advertising graphics and storyboards from Zulu. (Exhibition photographs: Henry Coleman at ZuluFilmStore.com)

The storyboards on display were originally thought lost forever until they were rediscovered in Natal in South Africa in 2009, a few miles from where the film was shot.

These are particularly relevant to The Firing Line's collection as they record the Attack on Rorke's Drift Hospital in 1879.

Ìý

Stanley Baker with Zulu executive producer Joseph E. Levine during filming

This will be the last opportunity to see these objects in the United Kingdom before they travel to South Africa later in the year.

Read articles on the film Zulu and on actor Stanley Baker by film critic and historian Dave Berry, on the ´óÏó´«Ã½ Wales Arts website.

Plus, read ´óÏó´«Ã½ Wales History blogger Phil Carradice's articles on the Zulu wars and Rorke's Drift.

Welsh artist Theo Shields created a 100-metre sand artwork in Portmeirion to publicise the 2011 Comic Relief campaign.

The 18-year-old worked alongside Ben Wayman and Pippa Ogle for five hours to create the three Red Nose characters - Honkus, Chucklechomp and Captain Conk - in the sand, braving the cold February winds.

The artwork's creation was filmed by Jake Carpenter, and can be seen here:

Theo Shields has appealed to the public to go and 'do something funny for money' in his colossal artwork with the hope to raise support for Comic Relief funded projects in Wales and abroad.

Shields, who has already been commissioned to create his sand-art for the likes of Wakestock festival, says: "The new Red Noses are really cool, I've enjoyed putting my own take on them by blowing them up to such a huge scale. Working on the beach around tides and Welsh weather is always a challenge but with help from friends it becomes part of the fun, I'm just glad I finished before the tide came in!

"I really wanted to do something for Comic Relief because of the great projects they support right here in Wales, I really hope the people of Wales we raise a lot of money this year!"

Red Nose Day takes place on Friday 18 March, and the public are urged to do something funny for money. All the money raised by the public for Red Nose Day will help change the lives of poor and vulnerable people right here in Wales, across the UK and in Africa.

• Red Nose Day on the ´óÏó´«Ã½

A new exhibition featuring the works of one of the most talented artists to have heralded from Wales has gone on show at the .

Artists in Focus: Lyrical Lines: Drawings and Etchings by Augustus John (1878-1961) incorporates pieces from the museum's existing holdings of work by the artist, in addition to loans from an important private collection.

2011 marks 50 years since the death of Augustus John, one of Wales' most celebrated artists. He grew up in Tenby with his sister and fellow artist Gwen John, and attended the prestigious Slade School of Art. He enjoyed a bohemian lifestyle and was deeply influenced by the Romany tradition.

Augustus John

The exhibition at National Museum Cardiff runs until 5 June.

Read an article on the painter by ´óÏó´«Ã½ Wales History blogger Phil Carradice, and browse a photo gallery of Augustus John.

Also, keep an eye out for Framing Wales, which begins on Thursday 24 February on ´óÏó´«Ã½ Two Wales. Presented by Kim Howells, who attended Cambridge College of Arts and Technology, it is his personal view of the great 20th century Welsh paintings and painters - and Augustus John is featured in the first episode.

How does a battered survivor of 40 years of stormy political wars start to tell the story of art created in Wales in the 20th century? Climbing alone in the Alps in 2010, I had plenty of time to think about it.

It struck me that rugged, dramatic scenery was the obvious place to start. After all, for over 250 years, our sublime Welsh landscape has drawn and inspired artists, from Richard Wilson and JMW Turner to Charles Burton and Ernest Zobole.

And, of course, that landscape has people in it. Special people who provided the security and encouragement that enabled artists to pursue new directions in their work. Heinz Koppel and Josef Herman, for example, escaped Nazi tyranny and found sanctuary and inspiration among the men and women of Dowlais and Ystradgynlais. They brought with them new ideas and challenging techniques that helped inspire young Welsh artists. And the place was wide open to new ideas.

Kim Howells

Right at the beginning of the century Wales possessed not only coal, slate and steel industries the equal of any in the world, but a painter whose reputation rode as high in the international celebrity league tables as any artist from Paris, Berlin or New York. Augustus John was a force to be reckoned with in every sense: a draughtsman of extraordinary skill and flair, capable of infusing his work with penetrating insights into the character of his sitters, he was in constant demand and able to command huge commissions.

Augustus John

Ready, always, to sail close to the rocks of scandal and controversy, Augustus John made no secret of his sister Gwen's willingness to pose naked for him. He considered her to be a painter of the first rank and, indeed, her reputation grew throughout the century.

Working in France, while her brother painted the great and the good of British Society, Gwen John became the model and lover of the world's most celebrated sculptor, Auguste Rodin, before retreating into a world of religious mysticism where her painting flourished. Not bad for two children, born and raised in West Wales.

That is why we have chosen them to begin this remarkable story. In four films, starting with the Johns and ending with the continuing creative surge into the 21st century, we will show how painters in Wales, throughout the century, produced work the equal of any in the world.

Framing Wales begins on Thursday 24 February at 7.30pm on ´óÏó´«Ã½ Two Wales.

Work by renowned wildlife artist Charles Tunnicliffe depicting his first summer spent on Anglesey is currently on show at in Llangefni.

Shorelands Summer Diary shows work from the artist, who moved to Anglesey in 1947; Shorelands was the bungalow at Malltraeth that he and his wife Winifred moved into.

The bungalow proved the ideal place for the artist to watch seabirds, wardens and wildfowl, and Tunnicliffe was able to build on his knowledge of the island's many bird haunts.

In 1952 his book Shorelands Summer Diary was published, which included paintings of golden plovers, whimbrels, shoveler ducks, shags, black-tailed godwits and peregrine falcons.

Some of the highlights in the book are the monochrome illustrations of wind-sculpted sand, waves and ripples, growing plants and stormy seas. Plus, his illustrations of cattle, flocks of sheep, anglers, farm buildings, dunes, dogs and agricultural shows capture an image of life in 1950s rural Anglesey.

Charles Tunnicliffe's monochrome illustration of Porth Cwyfan

Monochrome illustration of Welsh black cattle at Bont Farm

The exhibition, which opened in January, runs until Sunday 22 May 2011. For more information visit the website.

Oriel Ynys Môn is also one of the partnership venues for the new ´óÏó´«Ã½ Cymru Wales series Rolf on Welsh Art, and will be showing an original painting by Rolf from the series.

Additional information

• Rolf on Welsh Art

Read the rest of this entry

Rolf Harris will be at the tomorrow, Wednesday 16 February, to talk about the new ´óÏó´«Ã½ Cymru Wales television series Rolf on Welsh Art.

Rolf Harris with his wobble board during filming of Rolf on Welsh Art

The programme starts on ´óÏó´«Ã½ One Wales on Wednesday at 7.30pm, and Rolf is set to appear at the Cardiff museum and gallery to talk about the new series and answer questions in conversation with ´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio Wales Arts Show presenter Nicola Heywood Thomas.

The session is free and begins at 2pm, and everyone is welcome. .

Ìý

There's a great story on the ´óÏó´«Ã½ Wales News website today about the planned revamp of one of Dylan Thomas' old drinking spots.

Dylan Thomas smoking a cigarette. Photo: Jeff Towns/Dylan's Bookstore

Browns Hotel in Laugharne was a favoured watering hole with the Welsh poet. It has been closed for five years but is now set for a new lease of life as a boutique hotel - and will have the makeover in time for the centenary of its most famous customer's birth.

The current owner has been awarded £230,000 towards the refurbishment of the Grade II listed building - with the aim to return it to how it would have looked in Thomas' 1950s heyday.

Read more on the story on ´óÏó´«Ã½ Wales News online.

Award-winning author Philip Pullman will speak to Roy Noble on his ´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio Wales show this afternoon from 2pm.

Philip Pullman

Pullman is the author of children's favourites books including The Ruby In The Smoke, The Firework-Maker's Daughter and I Was a Rat!, but he is perhaps most famous for his best-selling trilogy His Dark Materials; Northern Lights, The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass.

As an aside, I once wrote an essay during my time in university in which I compared Northern Lights and one, I forget which, of the Harry Potter series. And before anybody comments about the dumbing down of university education these days, the module was specifically on Children's Literature, but I can't say that reading children's books for a couple of months was a chore!

Pullman was born in Norwich in 1946, and was educated in England, Zimbabwe and Australia before his family eventually settled in north Wales. He holds a CBE and an honorary D. Litt. from Oxford University, and has recently been made a Fellow of the Welsh Academy.

Tune in to Radio Wales from 2pm to hear Roy talking to Philip.

Additional information

• Roy Noble on ´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio Wales

Welsh actor David Thaxton has been nominated for an Olivier Award for his role in the Donmar Warehouse production Passion.

The actor, and former member of Welsh choir Only Men Aloud, has been nominated in the Best Actor in a Musical category for his portrayal of Giorgio in the Stephen Sondheim musical.

Scarlett Strallen (Clara) and David Thaxton (Giorgio) in Passion. Photo: Johan Persson

Thaxton was born in Neath in south Wales and trained at the . He went from his two season-stint as Enjolras in Les Misérables to play army officer Giorgio opposite fellow Oliver Award nominee Elena Roger - a man at once disgusted by, yet drawn to, the obsessive Fosca.

He is shortlisted with four other actors for the award: Alex Gaunmond for Legally Blonde - The Musical at the Savoy theatre; Michael Xavier for Love Story at the Duchess theatre; Ramin Karimloo for Love Never Dies at the Adelphi theatre and Sahr Ngaujah for Fela! at the National Theatre Olivier.

David Thaxton and Elena Roger in Passion. Photo: Johan Persson

He has previously starred in theatre productions including The Tailor's Daughter (Wales Millennium Centre), Trial by Jury (´óÏó´«Ã½ National Orchestra of Wales), The Cunning Little Vixen (Cardiff Sherman) and Sweeney Todd (Norwich Playhouse).

Thaxton's nomination comes just a year after two fellow actors from Wales were successful at the 2010 Olivier Awards: Aneurin Barnard and Iwan Rheon both scooped the prestigious prize, each for a role in the musical Spring Awakening.

Read more about the Olivier Award nominations on the ´óÏó´«Ã½ News website and visit for a full list of the 2011 nominees.

Five new paintings by acclaimed artist and entertainer Rolf Harris will be going on show at museums and galleries around Wales as part of a new ´óÏó´«Ã½ Cymru Wales arts series Rolf on Welsh Art.

The paintings, which were created for the series, feature Rolf's attempts at creating a work in the styles of the four featured artists - Sir Kyffin Williams, Graham Sutherland, Josef Herman and Shani Rhys James.

Each episode of the four-part series sees Rolf visiting the areas where the artists worked, hearing about them and their work through friends, family and experts, and putting into practice what he learns to commit his own tribute to canvas.

Rolf Harris

Rolf had to tackle challenges he had never faced in his artistic life before, including:

• painting entirely with a palette knife in the style of Sir Kyffin
• viewing himself in a hand mirror to paint, as Shani Rhys James does
• picking up objects from Pembrokeshire to incorporate into his interpretation of Graham Sutherland
• redoing his version of his Josef Herman as his first effort wasn't "monumental" enough

You can see how he fares with the differing styles in the series Rolf on Welsh Art, which begins on ´óÏó´«Ã½ One Wales on Wednesday 16 February at 7.30pm.

´óÏó´«Ã½ Cymru Wales has worked in partnership with the four museums and galleries to enable audiences across Wales to come face to face with Rolf's work.

The paintings can be viewed at the following partnership venues:

• , from 4 February
• , from 7 February
• , from 11 February
• , from 16 February

Each gallery contains the original most closely associated with their area and some will also display reproductions of the others. Glynn Vivian will display two originals in the style of Josef Herman - a first watercolour attempt, which Rolf declared "a good representation" but not like Herman's, and a second painted in oils, which he is most satisfied with of all the four tributes.

Rolf Harris himself will be visiting National Museum Cardiff on Wednesday 16 February to talk about the series and answer questions in conversation with ´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio Wales Arts Programme presenter Nicola Heywood-Thomas. The session is free and begins at 2pm.

Read a story about Rolf's painting of Bryn Terfel's father Hefin Jones, on display at Oriel Ynys Mon, on the ´óÏó´«Ã½ Wales News website.

The exuberant Rolf Harris goes in search of some of the greatest artists to be inspired by Wales in a new series Rolf on Welsh Art (Wednesday 16 February, ´óÏó´«Ã½ One Wales).

In the series Rolf, whose own family hail from Merthyr Tydfil, looks at the landscapes and the people who inspired the late great Sir Kyffin Williams, Graham Sutherland, Josef Herman and Shani Rhys James - like Rolf, an Australian who has long lived in Britain.

And in each of the four episodes, Rolf tackles a tricky challenge - trying to paint a picture in the style of each of the artists.

"I think everybody looks at something in a different way. You've got to enjoy the end result and just wonder how you'd go about painting it if you had the chance. Would you be able to tackle it?" says Rolf of his attempts to capture the essence of each of the four's styles on canvas. "But it's really a shock when you try and paint something as someone else does it. They have been doing it for years and years and you try it for the first time, and if it doesn't work, that's such a shock," he says.

Of the several styles he tried out, he believes his most successful was his tribute to Josef Herman, a Polish émigré who set up a studio in Ystradgynlais in the 1940s to paint some of the most enduring images of the working man ever seen.

His subject was the Welsh miners, who he portrayed as mighty figures, similar, Rolf feels, to the statues on Easter Island.

"He painted them as heroic figures because that's the way he saw Welsh miners - as heroes," says Rolf of Herman. "I think it was the first time that most people had ever had that pointed out to them, that these men were so heroic, so courageous and gutsy, braving possible death underground at every step. He had nothing but admiration for them and that came out in his paintings."

The series starts with a look at the life and work of Sir Kyffin on his beloved Anglesey. The painter was a personal friend of Rolf, who reminisces about the artist as he finds his sitter for his Sir Kyffin-style painting, farmer Hefin Jones - otherwise known as the father of opera star Bryn Terfel.

"That was one of my favourite moments - painting Hefin," says Rolf. "I managed to get a really good likeness, but it didn't finish up anywhere near as good as the many palette knife portraits Kyffin had made of so many Welsh people.

"I found I was using the tip of the palette knife to paint a lot of things in tiny detail, whereas he seemed to use the great flat areas of the knife blade to smooth things across. The more I painted, or tried to paint in his style, the more I realised just how absolutely brilliant he was, just so incredibly good!"

In this first programme, Rolf also takes a trip up the Snowdonia Mountain Railway and visits Oriel Ynys Mon in Llangefni, where many of Sir Kyffin's paintings are now housed. And the gallery is taking delivery of Rolf's own original picture of Hefin Jones which will be on public display from today.

And there's a chance to catch up with even more Welsh art in a companion series, Framing Wales, which starts on 24 February on ´óÏó´«Ã½ Two Wales. Kim Howells presents his personal view of the abundance of great painters and paintings that emerged from Wales during the 20th century.

A north Wales art gallery is in the running for the , the UK's largest arts prize.

The Mostyn gallery in Llandudno has been longlisted for this year's £100,000 prize, which rewards excellence and innovation in museums and galleries across the UK for a project completed or undertaken in 2010.

Mostyn has been selected for the refurbishment and extension of the gallery, which cost £5.1 million and took three years to complete. This announcement follows the recent news that the gallery has won a 2011 Civic Trust Award.

Mostyn, Llandudno. Photo: Hélène Binet

Mostyn. Image: Martin Lyons

The Chair of the judges, Michael Portillo, announced the longlist for the prestigious prize on last night's ´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio 4 Front Row programme - listen again on ´óÏó´«Ã½ iPlayer.

A shortlist of four museums/galleries will be announced on 19 May, with the £100,000 cash prize awarded to the winner at a ceremony on 15 June.

The other nine long listed institutions are: British Museum, London; Hertford Museum, Hertfordshire; Leighton House, London; People's History Museum, Manchester; Polar Museum, University of Cambridge; Robert Burns Birthplace Museum, Alloway; Roman Baths Museum, Bath; V&A, London; and Yorkshire Museum, York.

The director of Mostyn, Martin Barlow, said: "It is both an honour and a delight to be long listed for the Art Fund Prize 2011.

"The new Mostyn gallery took no less than twelve years to realise, but now we have it we have been overwhelmed by the wonderful response to both the building and the exhibitions in it, and by the number of visitors we are receiving.

"Being longlisted for the Art Fund Prize feels like recognition for all the thought and effort that so many people put into making this building such a great success."

Visit the to see the latest exhibitions at the gallery, and visit to find out more about the prize.

Sad news today, as it was announced that Margaret John, Welsh actor and star of Gavin & Stacey, has died at the age of 84.

Margaret John

John, who also starred in the ´óÏó´«Ã½ Cymru Wales comedy High Hopes and had an acting career spanning six decades, died in hospital in Swansea after a short illness.

Read the full story on the ´óÏó´«Ã½ News website, and read more about her career on the ´óÏó´«Ã½ Wales Arts website.

A play set to be directed by Hollywood star Michael Sheen in his home town of Port Talbot later this year will be turned into a film following a funding grant from the .

Passion will be the final, and largest, production by in their successful inaugural year. Written by Welsh poet Owen Sheers and under the guidance of creative director Sheen, the play will be inspired by the the biblical Passion Play and will be performed in various locations across the town.

Michael Sheen in Port Talbot (while filming for ´óÏó´«Ã½ Wales' Coming Home)

The Film Agency for Wales has awarded £125,000 from £425,000 for film Port Talbot Passion, while three other Welsh filmmaking projects will benefit from awards.

Read more on the story on the ´óÏó´«Ã½ Wales News site, and see the full list of funding grants announced by the .