Tudor Rhys Etchells (b.1994 Cardiff, Wales)
is a documentary artist who uses the fiction of the photograph to challenge legally created realities.
Working within such a bureaucracy in his previous role as a human rights lawyer inspires his closeness to the document and brutally mundane. To him, the photograph and the law are both frameworks for negotiating evidence, belief and knowledge.
The performative element of these systems is best acted on the stage photography provides. By breaking the fourth wall, legal and photographic portrayals of truth can be subverted.
Documentary is a medium that often fails, so satirising its relationship to border regimes, the norm of the imagined nation state is questioned.
tudoretchells@gmail.com
instagram
Pacta Sunt Servanda
Available Potential Guaranteed
A Reasonable Degree of Likelihood
CV
SELECTED WORKS
CV
Awards2025 - Ones to Watch - British Journal of Photography
2025 - FUTURES Artist - nominated by PhotoIreland
2024 - BOP Bristol Book Dummy Showcase
2024 - Art Council Wales Create Funding
2023 - BayArt Writing Room Residency
2023 - Source Photography Journal - Graduate Showcase
2022 - Reginald Salsbury Award
2022 - PEP New Talent 2022
2017 - Peter Duffy Scholarship at the European Court of Human Rights
2010 - United World College – Great Britain Committee Scholarship
Solo Exhibitions
2024 - Available Potential Guaranteed, Ffoto Cyrmu: Wales International Festival of Photography, BayArt, Cardiff
2021 - Seeking the Mundane, CURAD, Cardiff
Group Exhibitions
2025 - East Meets West - FORMAT Festival, Derby
2024 - HERE NOW, BayArt, Cardiff
2023 - LFant, BayArt, Cardiff
2023 - Dislocations, Bienal ‘23 Fotografia de Porto -P.Artes, Porto
2023 - Photographic Exploration Project NEW TALENTS 2022,245Forest,Brussels
Publications
2026 - The Representation of Landscape is Political - Interview - FUTURES
2026 - Financial Times Weekend Magazine, Home Photography Special (print + online)
2025 - British Journal of Photography - Ones to Watch (print + online)
2024 - conditioned space - response by Sadia Pineda Hameed
2022 - Then There Was Us – Annual 2022
2020 - Reflections in the Charity Shop Window -
Künstler Künstlerin
Artist Residencies
2026 - ISSP + FUTURES - Riga, Latvia
2024 - Writing Room, BayArt, Cardiff
2024 - CENTRUM - Port Townsend, USA
2016 - Overheard Map - The abacus, Cardiff
Artist Talks/Performances
2026 - BAL Analogue Lab, Riga, Latvia
2026 - ISSP, Riga, Latvia
2025 - Panel: Insights into Identity, Paris Photo, British Council, Paris
2025 - Ayn Gallery, Istanbul
2025 - In Conversation with Jack Moyse, CARDIFF MADE
2024 – In Conversation with Charlotte Grayland, Available Potential Guaranteed
2023 - Facilitator - Documentary Futures Symposium: European Centre forDocumentary Research
2023 - Guest Lecture - Carmarthen School of Art
2023 - Panel: The Ethics of Photography During & After Conflicts, Ffotogallery
2022 - In Conversation, Ffotogallery
Education
2023 - Distinction, MA Documentary Photography - University of South Wales
2018 - Very Competent, The Bar of England and Wales.
Employment
2025 - Associate Lecturer, Photojournalism and Documentary Photography University of Gloucestershire + University of South Wales
2024-25 - Mentoring for Higgins New Voices
2016-24 - Human rights (Immigration and Asylum) lawyer
Last Updated 10.06.2026