NOW DOLGARROG - Marc Mcnulty
SATELLITE Festival Exhibition
Location: COG (Conway Road, Dolgarrog, LL32 8JS)
Open: 3rd October - 8th November 2025. (Launch event - Oct 11th at 2pm)
©Mark McNulty
Mark McNulty started his career in the mid-1980s, photographing the people around him whilst trying to make sense of the world as a young photographer. Mark photographed musicians and artists, ravers, psychobilies, and indie kids - and through photographing those communities, he ended up spending much of the next twenty plus years documenting parties, festivals, music scenes, and cultural events around the world.
Mark is now based in North Wales, in the Conwy Valley, and Now Dolgarrog is a celebration of the village that he’s now part of. The people he’s met since living there, its landscape, and the everyday details of a village going through changes.
©Mark McNulty
Nestled beneath the shadow of a steep hillside, Dolgarrog is a quiet village.
Some believe the hillside resembles a sleeping dragon, and folklore suggests the name is derived from Y Garrog, a mythical flying dragon. But, in reality, Dolgarrog comes from the Welsh words for water meadow (dôl) and torrent (carrog). So the village is named after its relationship with water, and that connection continues to affect the village on a daily basis.
Dolgarrog is bookended by a water treatment works and a hydroelectric power station, whilst in the middle is a hotel and leisure complex built around a manmade lake. Previously on this site stood the aluminium works, a factory that played a crucial role in building many of the village’s houses. It also had its own social club and provided employment for many of the villagers.
The works also built the Eigiau and Coedty dams in the hills above Dolgarrog, one of which breached in 1925, causing the devastating flood that claimed the lives of 16 people. On November 2nd this year, we commemorate this tragic event while reflecting on the village as it is now. And so Mark has been photographing some of the people that he see as playing a part in his Dolgarrog. The people he’s met whilst walking around the village, the shop owners and hairdressers, his industrial neighbours, the artists and makers, the people repairing and building new pathways through the woodlands and those restoring old railways. And whilst he’s not come across any psychobilies yet, it’s still early days…
©Mark McNulty
©Mark McNulty
Originally from Liverpool, Mark McNulty is a North Wales-based photographer and filmmaker. He started out in the late 1980s documenting the UK rave scene, and that archive has recently been celebrated by the British Culture Archive, Café Royal Books, and Open Eye Gallery amongst others, whilst here at Oriel Colwyn we hosted the first retrospective exhibition of his archive of music work in a show called 35 Summers.
Other archive projects are planned, whilst a book entitled ‘In Clubland’ is set for publication in 2026 by Modern Sky. More recently, Mark has worked on the Bay View projects, with Oriel Colwyn, a year-long archive to document the people of Colwyn Bay (exhibited at Coed Pella, Oriel Colwyn and Porth Eirias), whilst working on various other personal projects in North Wales.
All festival exhibitions are FREE to visit.