About
Wales is a land of myth and mystery which are nowhere better embodied than in its landscape. For both the visitor and the inhabitant, this land is layered into history going back into the fog of time: princes and battles, conquests and revolts, the early Celtic Christians, Roman forts and pilgrims crossing the seas. Gareth Phillips has arduously explored the least accessible parts of Wales. Y Tir Newydd | The New Land is an artistic translation of the furthest points of the Welsh Landscape north, south, east, west, high and low. An imagined world collides with abstract reality summoning the demons, perils, beauty and mystery that many only experience when voyaging far past the comfortable confines of an urban world. Y Tir Newydd | The New Land is a personal voyage inspired by a departure from these comforts, aiming to connect and reach the soul of an indigenous landscape left untouched, even forgotten, in the wake of a shift away from the land for the modern world.
Gareth Phillips was born in 1979 in Cardiff, Wales. He studied documentary photography in the University of Wales, Newport. He is a freelance photographer regularly commissioned by the Guardian, The Sunday Times Magazine, Financial Times Magazine, Wall Street Journal and the British Council. His photographs have also appeared in, Newsweek, British Journal for Photography, The Observer, CNN Traveller and others. Phillips' work has been internationally recognized in exhibitions and awards, most notably the Ian Parry Award 2007, Welsh Livery Society Award for Photographic Excellence 2007, the Magenta Photography Awards 2008 and the British Council Open Cities Photographic Commission 2010. Gareth Phillips is also part of the MJR Photographic Collective based in New York.
