Turner House Gallery

An attractive building, The Turner House Gallery sits quite discretely in Penarth at the end of Plymouth Road. The building is painted an attractive shade of red, embelished with wonderful stone arches and oak doors. Just in front of the building is a nice patch of well kept grass with a bench. It’s a quite unusual place for a gallery, but nevertheless, it poses as an intriguing building.
Not enjoying an abundance of space, the gallery must use its space effectively to exhibit the various forms of art work it displays all year round. It attracts a good quality of art work, with exhibitions usually of an above satisfactory standard. The Gallery certainly doesn’t come across as amateur-​ish, despite the fact it remains relatively unknown. Instead, the professional atmosphere which visitors will be embraced by adds to the attraction of coming here. It can be a little eerie in here given the lack of visitors, although overall it’s a good gallery.

This Ffotogallery gallery (not to be confused with Ffotogallery’s other home in Chapter Arts Centre) is about five miles south of Cardiff city centre in the town of Penarth, and is known as Turner House Gallery.
Years ago, Ffotogallery had a great little gallery in Cardiff city centre itself, on Charles Street, which I often used to pop into at lunchtime to see exhibitions — and I was sad to see that disappear. This gallery is fantastic, but a lot less conveniently located for Cardiff residents.
It hosts changing exhibitions of photographic artwork, plus a whole host of workshops and other educational activities, including sessions aimed adults and children.
Because exhibitions cover the whole spectrum of lens-​based art, and change regularly, you could easily visit this gallery several times a year and have an entirely different experience each time. The gallery hosts exhibitions that focus on documentary photography as well as more expansive uses of photography that may involve the use of projection, digital and other lens-​based forms.

I’m a big fan of this gallery.
Despite living just down the road from it for a number of months, I only really ventured in for the first time last week. I was pleasantly surprised by the modern and professional atmosphere that I suddenly found myself in.
I’m not entirely sure what I had been expecting, but it was certainly not the wonderful photographic presentation before me. Although the gallery is small, they do a lot to maximise their space and put their artwork together in a thought provoking and interesting way, rather than just hanging it on the wall.
This is a lovely gem not far from the train station, Penarth Pier and lots of cafes. I advise you to make a day of it.

Certainly not a fancy gallery, the building itself is if anything slightly run down; none of that really matters though, as I was most impressed by the actual exhibitions and the staff, which make this gallery worth a visit.
The building is not too large, there are only really three rooms with art on display (one of them is rather minuscule). Whilst this inevitably makes the exhibitions small, I believe the available space is effectively used and the work on display is integrated seamlessly.

The gallery generally houses exhibitions with pieces focusing on the topic of pre and post apartheid South Africa. Whilst mainly works of photography, there are one or two sculptures, and there are two installations which feature a projector.
I found the present exhibition to be: — fascinating, evocative, odd, thought provoking, and on occasion slightly disturbing; reactions that I’m sure the gallery and the artists featured would desire.
I was particularly impressed by the staff, who were both incredibly knowledgeable yet un patronising (they really offered a wealth of information).
Unless you’re particularly fascinated by art of South African origin, I wouldn’t recommend making a trip to Penarth solely to visit this gallery, advice which is not issued in criticism, but due to the small size of the gallery (it would only take you 30mins at the most to explore). Penarth however is a fantastic little area of South Wales, so I recommend that you combine a trip to this gallery with a visit to other local attractions.

Brilliant Place to get a quick cultural hit. There’s always lots of explantation about the work and the artists, and helpful staff on hand. Exhibition are varied in topics, style and accessability but I never miss one.
Opens at 11 am and is closed Mondays.

Turner house Gallery Penarth
This was once a gallery devoted to art in the general form
of paintings. Now it is one of the few galleries in the country devoted to the art of Photography. It is run by Ffotogallery a national agency for photography in Wales
devoted to the promotion and development of photography in the country. It is well worth a visit if only to see how the art of photography is evolving in Wales
If you have only seen the results of the local camera club
(and I am not knocking camera clubs as I am a member of one myself) you may be pleasantly surprised at the advance in photographic art that the galley offers.
In addition to the photographic images there are activities for children called ‘shorts’ aimed at children ages 5-​to15 (and their carers) on Saturday mornings all free from 13.00 to 14.00 and 15.00 to 16.00 the next date is January 31^st
There are many other activates connected with photography
Which are outside to scope of this brief outline
Ffotogallery also runs courses in photography from beginners
to advanced.
The next exhibition is a series of images by Wendy McMurdo who is currently fellow in photography at Napier University Edinburgh which runs from 17 January to 1 March 2009.
Ffotogallery’s web site is given as

But for some reason I was not able to log on You may have better luck !