About
Oriel Davies Gallery is the principal contemporary art venue for mid Wales, occupying a purpose-built gallery in Newtown's riverside Park, and has since opening in 1994 built a national reputation for ambitious exhibitions of contemporary art and craft drawn from Wales, the rest of the UK and abroad. Named in honour of Welsh artist and collector Elizabeth Watkin-Jones and her connection to the Davies family, the gallery emerged from a long-standing local tradition of collecting and supporting the visual arts in the Newtown area, formalising decades of informal patronage into a properly resourced public institution with a genuinely national exhibition programme.
The gallery's purpose-built premises, set within the landscaped grounds of Newtown's Park beside the River Severn, give Oriel Davies a scale and technical capability disproportionate to the size of Newtown itself, a market town of around thirteen thousand people. This allows the gallery to host major touring exhibitions and significant new commissions that might otherwise bypass mid Wales entirely in favour of Cardiff, Swansea or the larger cities of the English Midlands, filling a genuine geographic gap in the country's contemporary art infrastructure. The gallery's exhibition programme spans painting, sculpture, textiles, ceramics and mixed media, with a particular emphasis on craft practice and material-led work that distinguishes it somewhat from the more conceptually driven programming of some of its counterparts elsewhere in Wales.
Oriel Davies also runs an active learning and outreach programme, working with schools and community groups across Powys and the wider mid Wales region, reflecting an institutional commitment to making contemporary art meaningfully accessible in a predominantly rural area where the nearest comparable galleries can be well over an hour's drive away. The gallery's café, overlooking the Park, has become a genuinely popular destination for Newtown residents independent of gallery visits, reinforcing its role as a piece of everyday civic and cultural infrastructure for the town rather than a specialist attraction visited only occasionally.
Run as an independent charity, Oriel Davies continues to develop new commissions and maintain relationships with artists across Wales, cementing its position as the pre-eminent contemporary art venue serving the whole of mid Wales.
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Plan Your Visit
⏱️ Recommended Visit Duration
💡 Visitor Tips
- The gallery is closed Sundays and Mondays — plan a visit for Tuesday through Saturday.
- Combine a visit with a walk through Newtown's riverside Park, in which the gallery sits.
- The café is popular with locals as well as gallery visitors, and worth a stop even outside exhibition hours.
- Free on-site parking makes this an easy stop for visitors driving through mid Wales.
- Check the current exhibition online before visiting, as the programme changes several times a year.
- Look out for craft and textile-focused shows, a particular strength of the gallery's programming.
Highlights
Purpose-Built Riverside Gallery
Oriel Davies occupies a purpose-built gallery set within the landscaped grounds of Newtown's Park beside the River Severn, giving the venue a scale and technical specification disproportionate to the size of the surrounding market town. Large, well-lit exhibition spaces allow the gallery to host major touring exhibitions and significant new commissions that would otherwise likely bypass mid Wales in favour of the larger cities, filling a genuine geographic gap in the country's contemporary art infrastructure that few other venues in the region can match.
Craft and Material-Led Exhibitions
Oriel Davies's exhibition programme places a particular emphasis on craft practice and material-led work — textiles, ceramics and mixed media — distinguishing it somewhat from the more conceptually driven programming of some of its counterparts elsewhere in Wales. This emphasis reflects both the gallery's founding connections to Welsh craft traditions and a deliberate curatorial choice to platform makers whose work might otherwise receive less exposure within the country's predominantly Cardiff- and Swansea-centred contemporary art scene.
The Elizabeth Watkin-Jones Legacy
The gallery's name and founding honour Welsh artist and collector Elizabeth Watkin-Jones and her connection to the Davies family, whose long-standing local patronage of the visual arts in the Newtown area predates the gallery's formal 1994 opening by decades.
This deep local history of informal collecting and support, formalised into a properly resourced public institution, gives Oriel Davies a genealogy distinct from many contemporary galleries founded from scratch, rooting its national exhibition ambitions in a specifically local tradition of arts patronage.
The Café Overlooking the Park
Oriel Davies's café, overlooking the landscaped grounds of Newtown's Park, has become a genuinely popular destination for local residents independent of any gallery visit, reinforcing the venue's role as a piece of everyday civic infrastructure for the town rather than a specialist attraction visited only occasionally.
The café's riverside outlook makes it a natural stop for anyone walking through the Park, whether or not they intend to view the current exhibition inside the gallery itself.
Collections
Oriel Davies Gallery does not maintain a large permanent collection, instead running a continuously changing programme of contemporary art and craft exhibitions drawn from Wales, the wider UK and abroad, with a particular curatorial emphasis on textiles, ceramics and material-led practice. As the principal contemporary art venue for mid Wales since 1994, the gallery's programme fills a genuine geographic gap in the country's cultural infrastructure, supported by an active learning and commissioning programme that extends its reach across Powys and the surrounding rural region.
Craft and Material Practice Programme
An ongoing curatorial emphasis on textiles, ceramics and material-led contemporary art across the gallery's exhibition schedule.
Themes
Time Periods
Current Exhibitions
No current exhibitions. Please check the museum website for updates.