This handsome, full colour book celebrates forty years of the work of Ken Elias, from student op art/collage to current work made in response to poetry. As an artist Elias is something of a conundrum. Born and once again based in Glynneath, he draws extensively on his locale and on his childhood in the Fifties, in particular his extended family and his frequent cinema going. Yet he is almost unique in Wales in his continuing adherence to Pop Art and collage. Taught by John Selway, Terry Setch and Ernest Zobole at Newport Art College in the 1960s collage and photomontage remain at the centre of his work, including his paintings: flattening perspectives, unexpectedly contrasting images, producing social and political commentary, assimilating a modernist urban artform into a Valleys context. Elias' is an art which blurs the edges of reality in a similar fashion to cinema. It asks the viewer to look afresh at the familiar and the domestic, and to question their own reality. The book, which accompanies a touring exhibition, includes five essays by leading commentators in the field: Hugh Adams - 'Who are you to decide what reality is?'
Anne Price-Owen - 'Ken Elias and the Hidden Persuaders' David Briers - 'Ken Elias and the Art of Photomontage' Jon Gower - 'Going to the Pictures' Ceri Thomas - 'Ken Elias: An Overview'

Ken Elias is one of the leading artists living and working in South Wales. Over the last forty years, he has produced an impressive body of acrylic paintings on canvas and paper, as well as photomontage and mixed media works.

Born in Glynneath towards the end of the Second World War, he represents a new generation of artists, of working-class origin, whose childhood was formed in the Fifties and who went to art school in the heady Sixties. He is an artist who, whilst remaining deeply rooted in the visual culture of South Wales, and the Valleys in particular, has always been responsive to and reflecting of the wider world. This complexity has been enhanced by his early experiences of cinema which, together with his love of art and poetry and employment of memory and imagination, informs his striking images.

Ken Elias: Thin Partitions looks at Elias's whole career to date and coincides with a major retrospective exhibition. It brings together a set of new essays by Hugh Adams, David Briers, Jon Gower, Anne Price-Owen and Ceri Thomas, introduced by a masterly foreword by his Tonypandy-born contemporary Professor Dai Smith. Elias has exhibited widely in Wales, the UK and Europe. His work is represented in the principal art collections of Wales, as well as private collections.

Ceri Thomas is Research Fellow and Curator of University of Glamorgan Art Collections specialising in the post-war visual culture of south Wales. An award-winning artist and art historian, he curated the touring exhibition Ernest Zobole: a retrospective.