Title: Hiraeth; a return to Wales
In Hiraeth: A Return to Wales, Môrafon walks from near Birmingham to Aberystwyth with two companions, exploring a rekindled thirst for adventure and homeland. Commissioned by Slow Ways—the national walking network—to test uncharted routes through some of the UK’s most sparsely populated landscapes, the project prompted deep reflection. Môrafon authored two essays and created a drawn book chronicling each of the three segments of the walk. The experience stirred questions about memory, journey, and recall – layered, linear, pictorial, sensory, auditory, and spatial recollections were gathered and distilled. Testing and reviewing the routes became a way to filter and process the narrative.
The resulting works capture the experience—not wholly, but as a thread of resonant moments. The final journey, From the Cambrians to the Sea, was marked by strange and vivid encounters, depicted pictorially from east to west: a dead rat draped on a footpath gate, a missing footbridge at the Newtown railway crossing over the River Severn, an ogre’s bonfire outside a tiny cottage, horses running in the wind, turbines howling through the sleety fog of the Cambrian Mountains, and pebbles shifting underfoot on the final shore. These fragments have been stacked and bound—offering multiple perspectives—in a reflection of the way.
Medium: handmade printed book
Size:
Location: Bristol, UK
Creative Experience
My work explores powerful relationships between people, nature, and architecture. Access to land and the environment motivates my artistic approach – I seek ways to reconnect humans with the natural world. Disconnected landscapes also provoke creative engagement, exploring liminal areas between physical and emotional space – roads, junctions, and the psychogeography of the in-between.
Alongside an international exhibit-design career, I’ve shown work in Bristol, Slimbridge, Exeter, Worcester, and London. In Bristol, many of my works explore roads and movement. During a Bristol Archives residency and the exhibition Stone Landscapes, I used film and installation to redraw historic features—lost to road development—back into the landscape. For Propagate Way, I staged a campaign promoting a green bridge pedestrian solution for Bristol's M32 motorway, culminating in a curated exhibition that included large-format cinematic paintings of the inner-city motorway, expressing the urgency for improved access
Biography and links
Born in Wales, Môrafon is a multidisciplinary artist with 25 years of practice in art at the intersection of science. Their work supports powerful storytelling for natural and cultural heritage organisations across the UK and overseas.
Informed by two decades of interpreting landscapes, working with the Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust and its international consultancy, recent collaborations include governments, the Longmynd Commoners Association, National Trust, American Museum & Gardens, The Church in Wales, Kent High Weald Partnership, RSPB, RSA Augmented Society Network, Slow Ways, Sustainable Soils Alliance, The Wildlife Trusts, and VisitMôr. Contributions to art and academia have expanded public engagement, supported fundraising exceeding £1.4 million, earned award nominations, and raised critical debate. Môrafon’s practice is underpinned by long-standing thought leadership, including five years as a trustee and chair of the Association for Heritage Interpretation.
Recent seminars include Interpretation for Diversity and Inclusion Best Practice Guide, co-authored with experts from the British Museum, National Trust, Bristol Museum, and Iconic Black Britons. Further contemporary presentations include UNESCO Landscapes: Interpreting the Picturesque, an interpretation scheme developed for Pontcysyllte, once the tallest navigable aqueduct in the world – the paper was presented at the Interpret Europe conference in Sighișoara, Romania..
https://www.morafonstudios.co.uk
2025 - Title: Hiraeth: a Return to Wales
- Mayor's Gallery, Las Vegas, US (Work on display: IRL)
- The Hive, Worcestershire, UK (Work on display: IRL & VR gallery)
- RSA House, London, UK (Work on display: VR gallery)