the riverfront gallery

The Riverfront Gallery hosts a broad spectrum of diverse and exciting arts exhibitions throughout the year. We are proud to host exhibitions by professional and emerging artists, sculptors, community groups, and schools. From photography to film, textile to graphics, fine art to performance art, the gallery provides a perfect platform to showcase work to the hundreds of visitors who come into The Riverfront each week.

Current Exhibitions...

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Georgie Meadows: Stitched Drawings

Having spent many years working with elderly people coping with mental and physical difficulties as well as a diminished role in our society, I now make images inspired by them.

To offer compassionate and good care we need to be able to see each person as a unique individual. This is often made difficult by their inability to make logical verbal communication. But so much communication is visual rather than verbal. Sight is a powerful sense: we spend so much time making fast decisions based on what we see. Looking and seeing can make us more informed and more creative in what we do, but it can also mislead - especially when loss of identity and control are involved.

I have always felt that the importance of the imagination - how we interpret what we see when caring or just being with people - is a neglected subject. I try to use my images to practise “looking” in a more reflective way: to try to avoid hasty assumptions or categorising. I have also found them to be useful aids to teaching occupational therapy students and those working in the caring professions. I hope to encourage empathy and inclusion as well as to celebrate the courage of those older people who find life a struggle.

Opening Date: 11th January 2024

Launch Evening: 18th January 2024, 6-8pm. Open to the public. Drinks reception and meet the artist. No need to book.

Informal Discussion with the Artist: 27th January, 12-2pm. Open to the public. Come and meet Georgie to discuss her work.

Closing Date: 27th February 2024

Location: Main Art Gallery

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Landscapes on the Edge

A series of black and white and colour photographs, taken on the Gwent Levels by Martin Wilcox over the last three years. Each photograph is accompanied by some poetry or prose to, hopefully enhance the mood of the images taken in this ancient landscape of reens, reeds and marshes.

Martin has been taking photographs for over fifty years and has had work published and exhibited as well as providing hundreds of pictures online with a major picture agency. His passion is black and white photography with many hours spent in the darkroom in the early years, but now mercifully, much more time spent outside taking photos thanks to the digital age.

Opening Date: 3 October 2023

Location: Mezzanine Gallery

Black silhouette over colourful background with the wording 'may Love Be What You Remember Most'

May love be what you remember most by CONSUMERSMITH

This piece, ‘May love be what you remember most,' stands as a memorial for life lost in recent times. The elderly, the vulnerable, the isolated people, the lonely people, the widows, the people in care unable to be visited through this global chaos and new age.  

It was originally installed in the street but then moved to its current location at The Riverfront, where it can be viewed from outside the building through the glass. 

AJ Smith who as an artist goes by the name of CONSUMERSMITH creates work that leaps between contemporary abstract expressionism and pop/street art portraiture. He is a prolific painter who has sold and created work worldwide and continues to sell and create work at a Steady rate - private commissions on paper or canvas to small- and large-scale murals for commercial properties, schools and homes. With his roots in graffiti and street art, CONSUMERSMITH is pushing boundaries of self-expression with vibrant work that is full of movement, colour and freedom.      

“Movement and colour understand each other ‘’ - Consumersmith 

We are currently selling prints of this artwork to raise money for future community activities.

Find Out More

Past Exhibitions...

 

If you are interested in exhibiting in our gallery please email Sally-Anne Evans at sally-anne.evans@newportlive.co.uk or call 01633 656757.