Â鶹Éç

The Last Gallery at Llangadog at the foot of the Brecon Beacons is currently playing host to a multimedia exhibition exploring the meaning of home.

Emerging artist Antonia Dewhurst brings her thought-provoking installation, including photographs, etchings, models and a video piece to the former cobbler's shop.

Entitled Preswylio, Dwell, it explores Antonia's own ambivalence towards the concept of being rhwng or 'between'.

Antonia was brought up as a non-Welsh speaker in Bangor, north Wales, and has often felt that she is caught between two cultures. Time spent in the air force and travelling from place to place has only helped to reinforce that sense.

But she says she is overcome by a strong emotion whenever she travels through the Conwy tunnel on the A55 and emerges on the western side, and is struck by the breathtaking view of Anglesey and the Conwy mountain.

Currently living in Llanfairfechan, Antonia spends a lot of her time running and reflecting, and it was during one of these runs that she was reminded of the tradition of the Ty Unnos or one-night house - a key theme in her exhibition.

Towards the close of the 18th century in Wales, poverty and homelessness was widespread and a new phenomenon of housebuilding emerged.

Antonia said: "If a dwelling could be raised between sunset and sunrise and have smoke emerging from its chimney at dawn, the builders could keep the house and the land as far as a hammer could be thrown from the four quarters.

"The tradition continued even into the 20th century and lingers in structures built by migrant workers in south Wales in the 21st."

Artworks by Antonia Dewhurst

She herself has applied for permission to erect a Ty Unnos from scavenged materials on land near her home and will use the experience as the basis for another art project in the spring. But she admits having permission for the build runs counter to the initial point of it being a squat.

Part of her exhibition at The Last Gallery centres on a series of small huts she has built using photographs of doors, windows and scraps of corrugated iron she has seen around north Wales over the years, which she has mounted on card.

But another strand is a display of estate agents' details, where she has substituted the house on the description for a picture of one of her built huts.

She said: "If I was really brave, I would have built a Ty Unnos at Penrhyn Castle, phoned them to tell them what I'd done, and waited for the police to arrive.

"Instead I've gone into four estate agents where you can still help yourself to property descriptions and swapped the details for ones with my huts as pictures. I haven't had any feedback on this yet!"

She says the models are metaphors for possible existences and the universal need for shelter and will be accompanied by etchings of nests, shells and huts as well as memories of growing up in Colwyn Bay.

A video installation will also look at psychological interiors and the effect of switching floors and ceilings so the room is re-defined upside-down.

Antonia Dewhurst's exhibition will be at the Last Gallery on 8, 9, 15 and 16 October 2011 from 10am-5.30pm.

Some of her work is also going on show in Tblisi in Georgia as part of the artisterium4 project, funded by Wales Arts International.

For more information on Antonia visit . The Last Gallery can be found online at .