Gruff Rhys
Nominated for Culture award
Gruff Rhys has become a Welsh icon to music lovers across the globe. He has been on a unique artistic journey the past 2 decades that has taken in success with the Super Furry Animals, as a solo performer and in a number of collaborations, including those with National Theatre Wales and Sherman Cymru.
For the theatre, Gruff created ‘Praxis Makes Perfect’ with the National Theatre Wales, which toured festivals such as Latitude and more recently has collaborated with playwright Tim Price and director Wils Wilson on ‘The Insatiable, Inflatable Candylion’ which was performed in December 2015 and January 2016 in Cardiff.
Gruff has made an exceptional and wide-ranging contribution to modern Welsh cultural life, through a variety of arts forms, including music, literature and film-making and in 2011 he composed the music for a game on iOS and Android ‘Whale Trail’.
His achievements include a BAFTA Cymru award in 2015 for the score of ‘Set Fire to the Stars’, a film about the life of poet Dylan Thomas, a Mercury prize nomination and shortlisted for Book of the Year with ‘American Interior’.