James Brady (Winner) ‘…all this could be lost.’ “Using digital video I explore remote landscapes and seek to re-work the imagery commonly associated with Romantic landscape painting. Although these images have their roots in an art historical tradition, they are intended to operate consciously within the ideology of Environmentalism – making poetic associations between wilderness and technology, ecology and the sublime, human time and deep time. In an attempt to go ‘beyond Romanticism’ maybe these images of our vulnerable native landscape suggest something more prophetic and urgent than just nostalgic ideas of our picturesque ‘green and pleasant land’?

Ian Brown (runner up) “My subject matter has always grown out of the found or second-hand image. I am interested in the way the real world is captured and re-presented through the print process, and a large part of my practice revolves around exploring how this mechanism operates. I also have a particular focus on source material that has been through some kind of intervention and so the hand-coloured or re-worked image is frequently my starting point” “The recent group of prints ‘Natural Disaster: Variants’ was conceived towards the end of 2008 as the financial world exploded. These images are intended to be a more tangible metaphor for this catastrophic event but ask bigger questions of the meltdown of our physical world.”

Caroline Jones (runner up) This painting is part of a series made over the past three years entitled ‘Displacement’ where the aim is to manifest the physical with a presence that cannot be ignored. In 1973 an international agreement protected polar bears from excessive hunting yet they remain endangered due to the physical shift and dissolve of their natural environment; the species is gradually fading away and has become a significant motif for the fragility of our landscape and the direct consequences of our apathy.

Poetry on the walls by Roger McGough, Andrew Motion and Paul Munden, is from Feeling the Pressure, edited by Paul Munden (British Council 2008) and reproduced here by kind permission of the individual authors, with whom the copyright remains. Feeling the Pressure is on sale here at £7.95 “Warming, Climate Change – the facts”,is a small booklet produced by the Met Office. We have a limited number of these to give away. Denbighshire Arts Service is supported by funding from the Arts Council of Wales. This exhibition is also supported by Martin Wright Associates who are working for Denbighshire County Council on the West Rhyl Coastal Defence Scheme.

A few websites that will give you more information on climate change: http://www.sustainwales.com https://www.carbontrust.co.uk/register.htm http://www.tyndall.ac.uk/Homepage http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/climate-change http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climatechange/ http://www.skepticalscience.com/