South Wales Artist Andrew T. Gardner Selected for UWTSD’s 2026/27 Breakthrough Artist Fellowship
Interdisciplinary artist Andrew T. Gardner has been selected for the University of Wales Trinity Saint David’s (UWTSD) Swansea College of Art 2026/27 Breakthrough Artist Fellowship, part of the Artists Futures Fund programme supporting emerging and developing creative practitioners.
Based in South Wales, Andrew works across painting, film-making, performance, and photography. A recent graduate of the MA Contemporary Dialogues programme at Swansea College of Art, UWTSD, where he achieved a distinction, he is also a part-time lecturer in Art and Photography at Gower College Swansea.
Andrew’s contemporary practice explores perception, mediation and the ways images are constructed and experienced. Through the Fellowship, he will investigate how painting can operate within wider systems of representation, transmission, and mediation, combining analogue and digital processes to examine how technology shapes our understanding of reality.
The Fellowship will provide access to specialist facilities, equipment, and mentoring, enabling Andrew to expand the conceptual and technical scope of his work through sustained studio experimentation and critical reflection.
Andrew said: “The Fellowship will provide an important opportunity to develop the conceptual, technical, and professional aspects of my practice. Access to specialist facilities, equipment and the guidance of experienced mentors will enable me to further explore my practice, allowing me to test ideas at a scale and level of complexity that would otherwise be difficult to achieve.”
Professor Sue Williams, Programme Manager of Fine Art: Studio Site & Context said: “It is a privilege to be collaborating once again with Artists Futures Fund programme through the Breakthrough Artists Fellowship. We, as a Fine Art Team, welcome selected Fellows in becoming an integral part of our creative community. It allows us the opportunity to support another future artist, in a world that needs the artists voice more than ever. We congratulate Andrew on being selected as our new Fellow and we look forward to the coming year.”
Andrew’s artistic journey began with an Art Foundation course at Swansea College of Art before completing a Fine Art degree at Leicester Polytechnic. He further developed his practice through study at the Academie van Beeldende Kunsten in Rotterdam, now the Willem de Kooning Academie, where he explored 16mm filmmaking and Flemish painting techniques, foundations that continue to inform his work today.
The Breakthrough Artist Fellowship recognises creative talent with the potential to make a significant contribution to contemporary artistic practice and provides a platform for artists to develop ambitious new work.
Further Information
Rebecca Davies
Executive Press and Media Relations Officer
Corporate Communications and PR
Email: rebecca.davies@uwtsd.ac.uk
Phone: 07384 467071