Gallery

About

“My work come from many different places, outside, inside, microscopic and gigantic. My starting point can be an experience, a set of existing structures, a place, an emotion, an object. I use observational studies, imagined forms and automatic gestures. For me there is a connection to a continuous landscape that stretches out from these starting points into a psychic realm, weaving in and out of collective or autobiographical experience. In this way making work becomes a process of divination pulling images from the moving paint on a surface, creating portals into other worlds, joining sometimes homologous things and sometimes disparate things through fine threads. 

I like to make paintings that tear away from my best intentions. They can take on new aspects, inviting the viewer to see themselves transported in some way.”

Tess Gray is a Welsh artist based in Cardiff. She studied Ba (Hons) Fine Art Painting at Winchester School of Art.

Recent awards and shows include, Wales Arts International: Year of Wales and Japan commissioned artist (2025) Occupata: Intersum, Oriel Canfas (2025) Experimentica: Call to Spring Array of Opposites, Chapter (2024), You Look Fine Though Elysium Gallery (2022), Wales in Venice DAC commissioned artist (2022)

Currently showing

Solo exhibitions
2022 You Look Fine Though, Elysium Gallery, Swansea
2013 CHANNELS, Arcade Cardiff, Cardiff​

Group exhibitions

2025 Choci Loni Meets Tobiume, Chapter, Cardiff
2025 Summer Art Prize, Cardiff Made, Cardiff
2025 Juxtaposed, Cyfarthfa Castle, Dowlais
2025 Occupata: Intersum, Oriel Canfas, Cardiff
2025 I Won’t Stay in a World Without Love, Prifysgol Aberystwyth, Aberystwyth
2024 Beep Painting Bienniale, Elysium, Swansea
2024 Y Lle Celf, Eisteddfod Genedlaethol, Pontypridd
2024 Array of Opposites, Experimentica, Chapter, Cardiff
2023 Winter Open, CardiffMADE, Cardiff
2022 Y Silff, Canfas, Cardigan
2022 Beep Painting Biennial, Elysium, Swansea
2022 Art of the Table, CardiffMADE, Cardiff
2022 Otherworlds, CardiffMADE, Cardiff
2021 Winter Open, CardiffMADE, Cardiff
2021 Without Borders, Art Space Korin, Kyoto
2021 Without Borders, Elysium, Swansea
2021 Cambium,CardiffMADE, Cardiff
2020 Beep Painting Biennial, Elysium, Swansea
2020 Concentric 2020,Shift, Cardiff
2019 KRS group show, Hearth Gallery, Llandough
2019 Viridis, CardiffMADE, Cardiff
2019 Jacksons Painting Prize finalist, Online
2018 Ardent Open, Ardent Gallery, Brecon
2018 Crickhowell Open, Oriel Cric, Crickhowell
2018 Flourish, CardiffMADE, Cardiff
2017 Winter Open, CardiffMADE, Cardiff
2017 Lost Vegas,Tactile Bosch, Tactile Bosch, Cardiff
2017 Postcards to Alaska, International Gallery of Contemporary Art, Anchorage, Alaska
2016 Winter Open, CardiffMADE, Cardiff
2016 Garden of Earthly Delights, Tactile Bosch, Cardiff
2015 Art Gemini Prize, Menier Gallery, London
2014 Solve et Coagula, The Abacus, Cardiff
2013 Affordable Art show, The Abacus, Cardiff
2013 Art Flare 2, SHO Gallery, Cardiff
2013 Modern Alchemists Autumn show, Capitol Warehouse, Cardiff
2013 The title art prize, Blank Media Canvas, Manchester
2012 For the time being, The Bargehouse, London
2012 I Am Woman Hear Me Roar, University of Southampton SU, Southampton
2011 The Big Empty Shop Experiment, Capitol Warehouse, Cardiff
2011 Women, University of Southampton SU, Southampton
2010 The Next Generation curated by Thinkspace, London Miles Gallery, London
2010 Kenneth Dibben Project, Southampton Science Park, Southampton

​Awards
2020 Peoples Prize, Beep Painting Biennial​

Publications
2020 Portraits for NHS Heroes
2020 Painters Tubes Magazines

Residencies
2018 Sep-Dec Aamir Art House AiR, Goa, India
2013 Apr- Aug Arcade Cardiff AiR, Cardiff

Education
2012 BA Fine Art, University of Southampton
2009 Foundation Studies Art and Design, University of Glamorgan

 

Fill this out if you have an enquiry, or if you just want to say hello : )