David Cushway
Working predominately in ceramic, with frequently forays into video and photography, Cushway’s often sublime work captures transient points within the life cycle of birth, day-to-day living and death. Snowdon (2002-2008), which could be viewed as Cushway’s signature piece, is an un-fired clay model cast from the original cast taken by Cushway of a small section of the famous Welsh mountain’s summit. Snowdon (2002-2008) refers to the mountain's origins as clay on the seabed and the process of igneous and metamorphic activity occurring over millions of years as well as a powerful symbol of Welsh identity.

David Cushway studied at Bath Spa University and the University of Wales, Cardiff with recent solo exhibitions at Bath Spa University - Work from the EKWC (2007); The European Ceramics Work Centre, Holland (2005); Primary Object, Chapter, Cardiff (2003) and a recently completed residency at the Philadelphia Clay Studio, USA in 2008.

Helen Sear
Helen Sear’s photographic practice has developed from a fine art background of performance, film and installation work. Sear continues to explore ideas of vision and the re-presentation of the nature of experience through lens based media and digital technologies, with recent work appearing to have several layers or surfaces. In 1993 she received an Abbey Award at the British School at Rome and recent exhibitions include Grounded, an Impressions Gallery touring show; Spot at the Yard Gallery, Nottingham; Hide, Ffotogallery’s Turner House, Cardiff; and About Face, The Hayward Gallery.

Sear is currently Reader in Photography and Fine Art Practice in the Centre for Photographic Research at the University of Wales Newport. Helen Sear is represented by Mermaid and Monster.

Miranda Whall
Miranda Whall’s current work includes drawings, paintings, video, photography, animation and sound through which she re-currently plays out representations of herself, presenting self portraits that explore the representation of both her body and her experiences. By constructing fantasy scenarios where she co-exists with other things, in-animate objects or living creatures, Whall makes humorous, unlikely and uncanny connections, dynamics and relationships in which she can play out both extremely personal, exhibitionist and explicit representations of her sexual, fertile, expressive self.

Whall studied at UWIC, Cardiff and The Royal Academy Schools and was an Associate Research Student at Goldsmiths College, University of London. Miranda Whall is represented by Mermaid and Monster and Vane.

Neal Rock
Exploring the limits of painting, Neal Rock paints with pigmented silicon, piped onto deep three-dimensional supports using icing bags. The densely layered, glistening constructions of paint are overtly baroque, whose ‘gloopy’ surfaces occasionally contain appropriated objects of commercial decoration. His work both attracts and repels, drawing the viewer in with colour and rebounding them with crude, almost horrifying surfaces. Born in Port Talbot, Wales, Rock now lives and works in LA and exhibits internationally.

Neal Rock is represented by f a Projects.

Michael Cousin
The films of Michael Cousin employ a process of association, where sometimes tenuous connections replace any attempt at narrative structure. Cousin’s work attempts to offer another way of thinking, of connecting one thing to another, to question the accepted order of how to get from A-to-B and to stop and stare in contemplation. Purposefully in-articulate, his work is both humorous and ponderous but always with a yearning critical eye.

'Cousin's work aims to stop things in mid-flow and to allow the viewer to make decisions about what they believe and why. His work carries with it the conviction that however the world exists, there is always an alternative, another way. He is disruptive; that is the crux of his practice. He successfully combines the naivety of a child, seeing the world afresh with a grown-up, stubborn belief that things could be different. He doesn't disrupt to cause anarchy, rather to create a space for contemplation.  His work is sometimes comical, sometimes absurd and often has a critical edge to it. He is intent on communicating something wordless, willing the viewer to look at something with new eyes, to experience reality refreshed. Perhaps he will never articulate exactly what it is he's trying to say, but I am convinced that he will keep on offering us alternatives.' - Gordon Dalton

Michael Cousin is represented by Mermaid and Monster.

Gaia Persico
Persico’s animations, installations and drawings are all direct descendants of real-life observations made whilst travelling as a part time air-hostess. The 'snapshots' of these urban, metropolitan infra-structures and sprawls are created in-situ, sitting by the window of the hotel room she happens to find herself in, using either her lap-top or simple hotel stationary.

The drawings are succinct, with the human presence implied rather than actually seen, focusing on air-conditioning vents, fire escapes, pylons, piping, television aerials, satellite dishes, elevator shafts, staircases and architectural details. Persico has exhibited widely nationally and internationally, most recently she was the winner of Re: Drawing ,Oriel Davies Open, Wales.

Gaia Persico is represented by monikabobinska.
 
Andreas Rüthi
Rüthi’s still-life paintings combine the quiet subtleties of Morandi with a curious humour. On a shelf, reproductions of artworks are set beside everyday objects – matchboxes, nail polish and figurines. The canonical artworks depicted by Rüthi are taken into the everyday, functioning as humble components of a domestic environment. Connections are read into the delicately painted, rather intimate objects. Both naïve and theoretical, the paintings have an immediate pleasure and a considered intelligence. A Swiss artist who lives and works in South Wales, Ruthi has exhibited in England, Germany, Switzerland and America.

Lloyd Durling
Using a meticulous time-consuming technique, Durling’s work are created with black biros. Recent work included detailed studies of flora and fauna, imagined remote locations such as forests or icy landscapes and most recently, more abstract, fantastical landscapes that seem to flow in and out of each other. Durling lives and works in Berlin.

Lloyd Durling is represented by Mermaid and Monster.

Anthony Shapland
Working in video, Shapland casts his eye over seemingly innocuous scenes where nothing overt is happening. Slowly revealed, his works forefronts a single action or maps out events as they happen. Dancefloors, oncoming streetlights, the re-creation of sunsets, an abandoned Christmas tree inexplicably set alight; the eventful nights out on the streets of Cardiff - all these subjects have all come under Shapland's gaze. Anthony Shapland is director of G39, the artist-run gallery in Cardiff, and is represented by Mermaid and Monster.

The Contemporary Art Society also invited Mermaid and Monster's co-Directors Gordon Dalton and Richard Higlett, also practising artists, to include work.

Richard Higlett
Higlett’s work involves bring meaning and value to practices that maybe considered acts of folly. This involves the creation of works in many mediums including sound and literature. A strand of his practise looks at work that is non-visual, as opposed to invisible, which involves making sculptural objects that do not demand to be directly observed and may be witnessed by only a small number of people. This idea informs recent pieces that look at actions in life which we may view as incidental and yet still being intrinsically creative. The most recent example of this is a score musical piece for Retractable Ballpoint Pen, its implied performance venue being the office, its indicated creativity is interwoven with everyday actions and the ‘simply beauty’ of existence is a continuously creative act.

Artist and co-director of Mermaid and Monster Higlett is also a co-founder and Librarian of ARC (Artist Resource Cardiff). www.artcardiff.com

Gordon Dalton
Dalton’s work is equally fascinated and disappointed with itself and the world in which it exists. His larger sculptures are often literally collapsing under the weight of references and their supposed self importance whilst smaller objects, paintings and collages attempt to weave together a randomly sourced set of references. Dalton is an artist, writer and curator and co-director of Mermaid & Monster.