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The

Artist

Tudor Rhys Etchells

Nominated in
2025
By
PhotoIreland
Lives and Works in
Cardiff, Cymru
Tudor Rhys Etchells uses the photograph to challenge fictions created by legal systems. Working within such a bureaucracy in his previous role as a human rights lawyer inspires his closeness to the document and the brutally mundane. For him, the photographic medium, with its own cumbersome structures of viewing and representing, appears the best match for understanding processes that construct the imagined norms of our society. Embracing photography’s performative element, he deconstructs our conceptions of visual knowledge. He achieved a Distinction in MA Documentary Photography at the University of South Wales during which he was awarded the Reginald Salisbury grant. Recently he was awarded an Arts Council of Wales Research and Development grant to fund a residency and his first solo exhibition at BayArt, Cardiff. He is a lecturer at the University of Gloucester and regularly gives visiting lectures at institutions, including Ffotogalley. He is based in Cardiff and an associate artist of BayArt gallery.
Projects
2024

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The sale of citizenship is more commonly known as Golden Passports, or Citizenship-By-Investment. Estate agents sell recently developed apartments that, because of their price, allow the buyer to obtain the passport of that country. To understand how this institutionalised mobility is enacted I rehearsed such a purchase. Performing as an investor I accessed projects that would soon (not) house new citizens or their tenants. Within those viewings, model flats presented as homes whilst the agent and purchaser believed to care about the quality of the finish. Reality was suspended for the duration of the negotiation. Citizenship itself acts only as a means of access to a third country otherwise not granted by the original passport. This disconnect from the nation by the roles played emulates the arbitrariness of citizenship when it is tied to material form as capital. New builds become an outlier as citizenship is usually unseen, the emptiness of the nation state manifested in the failed utopia of new concrete. The nations where this played out remain unnamed.
Tudor Rhys Etchells
was nominated by
PhotoIreland
in
2025
Show all projects
Each year every member of the FUTURES European Photography Platform nominates a set of artists and projects to become part of the FUTURES network.

For the 8th FUTURES Talent Call for artists, PhotoIreland assembled a jury to select 5 artists from all the submissions received, composed by Ciara Hickey (PS2, Belfast), Julia Bunnemann (Photoworks, Brighton) and Mariama Attah (Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation, London), alongside PhotoIreland’s Julia Gelezova and Ángel Luis González.

The jury selected the artists on the strength of their practice and the projects submitted, as much as having considered the benefit of the opportunity that joining the FUTURES platform represents in their career.  

 

The artists selected were Henri Kisielewski, Nazlı Yıldırım, Shane Hynan, Tudor Rhys, and Zoe Hamill. Together, they represent a rich and diverse set of practices and topics of interest, investigating ideas around identity intertwined with politics, economical development, ecological stresses, community and spirituality, as much as beliefs. Their backgrounds are just as diverse, mirroring the wealth of cultures and traditions in contemporary societies across Europe and certainly in our region.

Through their work, they advance relevant and urgent conversations that will excite the FUTURES platform, bringing into the European emerging photography scene universal concerns and very personal approaches. 

Selection Committee

Ángel Luis González and Julia Gelezova, PhotoIreland

Ciara Hickey

Julia Bunnemann

Mariama Attah