Welsh Contemporaries Annual Exhibition

Geoff Evans runs the Oriel art gallery, which is in the old schoolroom of Salem Chapel at the top of town. This year he's got Rhodri Morgan, recently retired First Minister of Wales, to open his exhibition of 25 Welsh artists, many of them showing their work in Hay for the first time.
Geoff has been running this exhibition since St David's Day, 1989, so it's something of an established event, but it hasn't always been held in Hay. It started in Laugharne (famous for the Dylan Thomas connections), moved to London, and has also been held in Cardiff and Swansea. Rhodri Morgan has opened the exhibition before - in 1999, when it was held in Hammersmith, and other Welsh luminaries who have opened the exhibition include Sir Anthony Hopkins, Cliff Morgan, MPs Dr Kim Howells and Lembit Opik, and Sally Burton, widow of Richard Burton.
This will be the 21st Exhibition, and the opening will be held on Sunday 11th April, from 11am to 4pm. Rhodri Morgan will speak at 12.30.

Geoff has become slightly obsessed with the history of the chapel he's now using the schoolroom of. It may look fairly unprepossessing from the outside, but it's the oldest non-conformist chapel in Wales that is still being used for it's original purpose. There was an earlier one, at Ilson on the Gower, founded in 1642, but that is now a ruin. Salem Chapel in Hay was founded by the same chap, John Myles, who was the son of a Rector of Clifford Anglican Church, and it was built in 1647. He later had to flee to the United States, along with most of his congregation, and they founded a new chapel at Swansea, Massachusetts, where he is apparently still remembered.

Geoff's dream is to extend the present exhibition space into a fully fledged arts centre, with an emphasis on Welsh culture, including the recorded archives of Richard Burton, RS Thomas and Dylan Thomas.