James Rielly Tŷ Mawr: New Cardiff Exhibition Opens 2026

Key Points

• Welsh artist James Rielly is exhibiting his latest solo show, Tŷ Mawr, at the TEN contemporary art gallery in Cardiff.
• The exhibition will be running from Friday, 23 October to Saturday, 28 November 2026.
• Tŷ Mawr consists of new oil paintings on canvas and linen, together with pieces from his ceramic series of 2018, Random Acts of Kindness.
• The exhibition opening will take place on Friday, 23 October from 6pm to 9pm and the afternoon drinks reception will be on Saturday, 24 October from 2pm to 5pm.
• According to TEN, James Rielly is one of the prominent Young British Artists (YBAs) of the 1990s, whose works have found their way into the Tate collection, Saatchi Collection and Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales.
• Tŷ Mawr follows Tŷ Hyll, Rielly’s 2024 show at the gallery, which was his first with TEN and his first in Wales after more than ten years.
• Works will be on sale through the gallery and online and can range in price from ceramic plates at £930 to oil paintings of 2026 at £8,250.

Cardiff (Wales Times) October 23, 2026 – A solo exhibition of new works by Welsh artist James Rielly, titled Tŷ Mawr, has opened today at TEN contemporary art gallery in uk/local/cardiff/">Cardiff, presenting paintings and ceramics that the gallery says continue the artist’s long-running exploration of childhood, adulthood, humour and modern society.

As reported by Stephen Price of Nation.Cymru, the exhibition opens today and features Rielly’s “celebrated iconography offering modern-day” parables. The gallery’s own announcement states that Tŷ Mawr brings together a series of oil paintings on canvas and linen, heavily gessoed and delicately painted, alongside hand-made and hand-painted ceramic plates from the 2018 Random Acts of Kindness series.

TEN says the exhibition is a follow-up to Rielly’s 2024 show, Tŷ Hyll, which was his first exhibition as a TEN artist and his first in Wales in more than a decade.

Where can visitors see the exhibition?

The exhibition is being held at TEN, The Coach House, rear of 143 Donald Street, Cardiff, CF24 4TP. According to the gallery, it will run from 23 October to 28 November 2026, open Wednesday to Saturday from 10.30am to 5pm.

A launch event is scheduled for Friday, 23 October, from 6pm to 9pm. TEN has also arranged an afternoon drinks reception for Saturday, 24 October, from 2pm to 5pm.

Visitors can contact the gallery at info@gallery-ten.co.uk or on 02920 600 495 for further information. The gallery says artworks can be purchased online or by contacting TEN directly.

What works are included in Tŷ Mawr?

The exhibition includes new oil paintings on canvas and linen, as well as a collection of ceramic plates from Rielly’s Random Acts of Kindness series, first made in 2018. TEN says the plates were made and hand-painted by Rielly and repeat familiar images from his wider body of work.

Among the recurring images identified by the gallery are “the insect with a boy’s head, the many-eyed face, children in ghostly fancy dress”. TEN says these motifs reappear across different media and scales, maintaining what it describes as an “uncertain ambiguity”.

The gallery’s online exhibition listing identifies several 2026 oil paintings, including Wild Life, Wishful Thinking, Star Man, Floating in the Sky, Half Real, Half True, Flowers of Wales, Tŷ Mawr, Dancing Star and Against All Certainty.

The larger linen paintings, including Wild Life, Wishful Thinking, Star Man and Floating in the Sky, are listed at £8,250 each and measure 100cm by 80cm. Smaller canvas works, including Tŷ Mawr, Dancing Star, Flowers of Wales, Half Real, Half True and Against All Certainty, are listed at £4,400 each and measure 31.5cm by 26.5cm.

The twelve ceramic plates from Random Acts of Kindness are listed at £930 each. Each is described as a hand-made, hand-painted glazed ceramic plate measuring 25cm by 25cm.

How does TEN describe the new paintings?

TEN says the paintings resemble “a snapshot of an ongoing narrative” and a “still” from a mysterious and dark folk tale. The gallery states that the works move between the bizarre and the familiar, without offering an obvious context.

In its exhibition statement, TEN writes that the paintings are “simultaneously threatening and cutesy”, shifting between “tragedy and comedy” while remaining “wholly relevant”. The gallery adds that viewers bring their own cultural references to the works as they search for meaning and “hooks” to understand them.

The gallery also compares the paintings to religious frescoes, saying that familiar and recurring motifs appear throughout Rielly’s career and form his own iconography, offering “modern-day parables”.

What themes does James Rielly explore?

According to TEN, humour is the prevailing element in the exhibition. The gallery says Rielly uses “gallows humour” to draw viewers closer to difficult subjects.

The gallery states that the central theme is “us humans, our human condition and the world we have destroyed for ourselves”. It says Rielly’s “sugar-coated satire” provides a buffer that allows people to look at themselves without losing hope.

TEN adds:

“He offers us a coping mechanism – if we don’t laugh, we’ll cry.”

The exhibition statement also links the work to broader questions about human behaviour. It says Rielly’s imagery repeatedly returns to childhood and adolescence, including the psychological shift involved in leaving childhood and entering adulthood.

Who is James Rielly?

James Rielly was born in Wrexham in 1956 and grew up in Holyhead. He now lives in France and exhibits internationally.

According to TEN, Rielly studied at Gloucester College of Art and Design and then at Belfast College of Art in 1980. He was associated with the Young British Artists and took part in the 1997 Saatchi Sensation exhibition.

The Tate lists James Rielly as born in 1956, while Art UK identifies him as James Malcolm Rielly.

TEN says Rielly’s work is held in major public and private collections, including the National Museum Wales, Tate Gallery, Saatchi Collection, Scottish National Gallery and France’s Fonds National d’Art Contemporain.

His previous solo exhibitions include the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Nantes in 1997, the Centre d’art Neuchâtel in Switzerland in 1998, La Box in Bourges in 2014, the Beaux-Arts de Paris in 2015 and the Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo in Málaga in 2022.

How does Tŷ Mawr connect to Tŷ Hyll?

Tŷ Mawr follows Tŷ Hyll, Rielly’s 2024 exhibition at TEN. According to the gallery, that earlier show was his first as a TEN artist and his first exhibition in Wales in more than a decade.

In commissioned text for Tŷ Hyll, written by Michael Tooby, Professor of Curatorial Practice at Bath Spa University, Rielly explained that Tŷ Hyll referred to a small stone cottage beneath a steep mountainside in Snowdonia, which he passes when travelling to and from his family home in North Wales. Tooby wrote that the name is usually translated as “Ugly House”.

Tooby also noted that Rielly’s work often holds together apparently safe or charming imagery with something unsettling. He wrote that this tension between “the apparently safe and charming and the unsettling and disturbing” is widely recognised as a distinguishing feature of Rielly’s figurative paintings.

What has been said about Rielly’s artistic approach?

TEN’s press release quotes writers Sema D’Acosta and Juan Jesús Torres as saying: “James Rielly is something far more damaging than a political artist: he is an artist in motion sporting a mischievous smile.”

The gallery describes Rielly’s paintings as “subtle yet inherently dark”, working in oil on canvas and watercolour on paper. It says his paintings offer a “bizarre and unsettling narrative, like a Grimm fairytale – not entirely unrecognisable”.

TEN highlights recurring subjects in his wider work, including children smoking, masked faces, carrier bags, buildings and what it calls Rielly’s “characteristic enigmatic eyes” looking out at the viewer.

In the same commissioned text, Rielly is quoted as saying: “When I started trying to be an artist, I felt I knew what I was doing and why I was doing it. Now I have no fixed idea and most of the time I cannot explain in an easy way what I am doing.”

Background of the development

James Rielly emerged during the 1990s alongside the Young British Artists, a group associated with a major shift in British contemporary art. His participation in the 1997 Saatchi-sponsored Sensation exhibition placed him within a generation of artists whose work attracted wide public and critical attention.

His connection with Wales remains central to his artistic identity. TEN says he grew up in Holyhead, while its biography notes that he was born in Wrexham and later studied in Cheltenham and Belfast before building an international exhibition career.

The new exhibition also reflects a continuing relationship between the artist and Cardiff. Tŷ Mawr arrives two years after Tŷ Hyll, which TEN presented in October 2024 and which included works referencing Welsh places, folklore and historical memory.

The exhibition’s commercial dimension is also clear. TEN lists the new paintings and ceramic plates for sale, with prices ranging from £930 to £8,250, and says buyers may use the Own Art finance scheme for eligible purchases.

Prediction: How may the exhibition affect Cardiff’s art audience?

For Cardiff’s gallery-going public, Tŷ Mawr is likely to strengthen interest in contemporary Welsh art by bringing an internationally exhibited Welsh-born artist back to the city. Visitors familiar with Rielly’s earlier Tŷ Hyll exhibition may see the new show as a continuation of his visual language, while first-time viewers may be drawn by the accessibility of humour, familiar cultural symbols and the gallery’s focus on modern-day parables.

For collectors, the clear pricing and availability of works online may make the exhibition more accessible than a purely museum-based retrospective. The range of prices, from ceramic plates at £930 to larger paintings at £8,250, gives different audiences different entry points into Rielly’s work.

For Welsh cultural audiences, the exhibition may also renew attention to Rielly’s Welsh background and the recurring presence of Welsh places, language and memory in his practice. As TEN presents the works as part of an ongoing narrative rather than isolated images, the show may encourage visitors to view Rielly’s career as an evolving body of recurring symbols rather than a single fixed style.