21st June - 22nd
August 2003
Peterborough Museum and Art Gallery
Below is the copy from the exhibition catalogue, we
have a very large pdf of the printed version of this document. Please
email us if you would like a copy.
This years Peterborough Prize has attracted more entrants than ever before.
I would like to thank the artist Erica Tan, Michael Stanley, curator of
the Ikon Gallery in Birmingham and Andrew Chetty, an independent arts
production consultant, who were given the task of making this years final
selection.
The work that is being exhibited provides a snapshot of the vibrant arts
scene that exists in this country today. As is often the case with open
competitions, the nature of the work is somewhat diverse, themes do however
emerge. More work than ever this year is digital in nature yet much of
it takes painting as its starting point.
In fact, we have several artists who seem to be seeking to re-define notions
of landscape painting. Jeremy Gardiner creates three-dimensional abstractions
that are imbued with a sense of landscape. Jane Prophet uses technology
to deconstruct traditional notions of the genre and literally strips bare
these spaces. Environments so often perceived as natural are revealed
in their true, man-made form. Bo Droga's work takes a similar approach
by digitally augmenting the built environment he questions our relationship
with nature.
Other artists in the show play with landscape, Philip Duckworth and Joanne
Jones create their own worlds, taking photographs of models, and then
displaying them so as to suggest that they might be documents of real
places. Rory MacBeth uses the urban landscape and brings to our attention
the throwaway nature of the society in which we live by spray painting
burnt out vehicles dumped at the side of the road. Daniel Wallis paints
and repaints similar scenes from cities he has only ever witnessed through
photographs and each time a different experience of the urban is created.
Several of the artists in this year's show take a more traditional approach
but subtly subvert with their technique. Miranda Whall creates complex
drawn work, reminiscent of lace making, which on close inspection reveals
a startling subject matter. Soju Tao's work might seem naive, almost childlike,
yet his approach is highly sophisticated, consisting of many re-workings
of his found canvases. Myfanwy Johns extends the craft of fine art print
making into the digital arena by using a computer to scrutinise structure
at the micro level. Asnat Austerlitz's light touch creates works that
exist almost as ghosts of their original subject matter.
So while general themes seem to emerge, there is still plenty of variety
in the work on display and some of it is less easily categorised. Let's
not forget Elizabeth LeMoines animations that have there own personal
sense of structure and narrative.
The Peterborough Prize is a purchase prize, and a work or works by the
winning artist will become part of the permanent collection at Peterborough
Museum and Art Gallery. The winning artist will be selected by public
vote and will be announced by the Mayor of the City of Peterborough on
Sunday 13th July.
Asnat Austerlitz is an Israeli artist currently pursuing a Masters at
the Slade School of Fine Art in London. She has also studied at Hadassah
College, Jerusalem and the International Centre of Photography, New York.
She has had solo exhibitions at the Noga Gallery, Tel Aviv and the Gallery
of Beit Bril College, School of Art.
Over the past few years she has been interested in the idea of sport as
an emblem. This interest stems from her background. Austerlitz was a dancer
and athlete in her teenage years, and has developed in recent years a
critical examination of sport and athletics as a metaphor for the violence
of humankind. Skinny deals with perceptions of the female body through
images of female runners bodies, captured just before they start to race.
Currently Bo Droga lives in London, 'Concrete Landscapes' at Saatchi &
Saatchi head office, was his first solo exhibition in the capital. It
was followed by a group exhibition at Britart, 'Beauty is what you make
it'. Droga has strengthened his involvement in numerous group and solo
exhibitions and was finalist at two international art shows. Apart from
his public works Droga has also been selected for several private and
corporate commissions.
His works 'Concrete Landscapes' play with the conceptual idea of irony
and "trompe l'oeil" to challenge unattractive and dysfunctional
public sites and environments. He has long been fascinated by the contrasts
of rural and suburban landscapes and has injected these works with a simple
surrealist humour to provoke thoughts.
By using technology he has been able to transform a simple idea into a
powerful visual statement. 'Concrete Landscapes' betray the visual irony
of our environmental planning. He has digitally transformed the stanchions
of the Bridge into a giant domino formation. The bridge transforms itself
into a memorial to human beings and their continual and vain attempts
to conquer nature.
Philip Duckworth was born in Isleohne, Germany in 1976. Joanne Jones was
born in Cheshire, UK in 1977. They live and work in Birmingham, UK. Along
with their solo practice, they work collaboratively together.
The installation, a mock up of an artic base camp incorporating ephemeral
objects and photographic images, sound and video, reflects facets of the
artic landscape. On first inspection, the work appears to be images of
vast snowy vistas, tundra and artic wastes. Closer inspection reveals
that the artists have simulated these pictures by photographing model
landscapes. Photographic images of the surface of ice sheets merge with
views of barren plains. The sound of the steppes and forests are reproduced
in audio tracks, carefully constructed by the artists from recordings
of their voices, and processed to simulate the sound of icy gales and
forest clearings.
Jeremy Gardiner is Professor of Digital Arts, at the London College of
Music and Media. He has in the past also held the title of Harkness Fellow,
Visible Language Workshop, Media Lab, MIT, Boston. Jeremy has exhibited
internationally, for over twenty years at institutes such as Centro Cultural
Candido Mendes, Rio de Janeiro, ICA, and Deluxe Gallery, London.
Purbeck Light Years is a three dimensional temporal arena which evokes
a calm, receptive state of mind, a mixture of both old and new, hybrid
techniques that combine characteristics of painting and drawing, computer
animation and immersive VR.Ê Inside this virtual space is re-imagined
a whole world, a topographical landscape modelled in three dimensions,
silent and secret, a place of accumulated history.
The graphics of Purbeck Light Years help capture the imagination by creating
an ambiguous and subtle world where the atmosphere is luminous and the
space three-dimensional. The colour we see in the environment represents
the scattering, refraction and diffraction of sunlight by particles in
the atmosphere. Weather systems come and go, night follows day and seasons
change in real time. The use of imagery and ambient sound brings awareness
of the changes brought about by season, time and weather and the effect
they have on the appearance of landscape and the surrounding atmosphere.
Myfanwy Johns is currently carrying out PhD Research in computer generated
images & digital print at The University of Gloucestershire. She has
an MA in Visual Communication from U.C.E. Birmingham and an MA in Fine
Art from Nottingham Trent University. She has exhibited internationally,
has been granted several awards and has work in major collections including
Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery and Walsall Museum & Art Gallery.
Johns is interested in creating a synthesis between digital technologies,
painting and traditional print. The content of her imagery takes its starting
point from the investigative nature of the computer i.e. its ability to
present the inner structure of an image, reveal by magnification that
which is usually unseen by the human eye.These images come from representations
of natural and architectural form. This is where she sees her work as
being analogous to 'musique concrete' where natural sound is processed
through electronic media.
The action of repetition so essential to Fine Art printmaking is augmented
through using the computer to modify and manipulate images from the macro
to the micro scale.Ê Dynamics of scale also enables the imagery
to be printed over extensive and diverse surfaces, allowing the emphasis
to shift from 'mass production' to 'mass customisation'
Elizabeth LeMoine was born in Toronto, Canada, and lives and works in
London. Originally a theatrical costume maker, she gained her first degree
in fine art in 1989 and an MA in fine Art from Goldsmiths College, London
in 1995. She has exhibited Internationally, has won the Governor General
of Canada Bronze Medal and has been nominated for the ICA Becks Futures
award.
Primarily a sculptor, 'That shadow...' is LeMoines first film, inspired
by a residency at Sadlers Wells Theatre London. She recalled years as
a costume maker and reflected on things that preoccupy her, like colonial
identity, modern romance, underdogs, and an event current that year.
She works spontaneously, using ordinary materials and tools. When approaching
animation, she imagined using super-8, but that technology is now out
of date and difficult. She decided instead to use today's technology:
digital camera and computer. She shot the animation frame by frame with
a digital stills camera then used multimedia software to string individual
images together into moving images.
Rory MacBeth's work often uses the mechanics of painting to unpick and
question itself, and to play with the expectations of painting. Predominantly
this has been through exploring mimesis, the painted surface and blocking
function, often through inappropriately forcing three-dimensionality onto
a two dimensional medium.
The work in the show consists of abandoned burned-out vehicles that have
been meticulously re-sprayed their original colour, but all over including
tyres, windscreens, engines, interiors etc. The work exists as both object
and photograph.
Jane Prophet graduated in Fine Art from Sheffield Hallam University in
1987 and completed a PhD at Warwick University in 1995. Among her past
projects is the award-winning website, TechnoSphere.
The Landscape Room makes reference to the room of the same name at Holkham
Hall, North Norfolk where 17th Century landscapes are displayed against
crimson damask walls. The work comprises of six large format digital images
based on photographs of the grounds. The Red Books of East Anglian landscape
designer Humphry Repton (1752 - 1818) also influenced the work.
The artists worked with Stevie Bezencenet and Gill Oliver to take medium
format photographs. Gordon Selley wrote mathematical computer code used
toÊ 'grow' the simulated versions of the landscapes on a computer.These
3D landscapes were rendered in wire-line to show the underlying geometry
and then fully textured and made photo-realistic. The artist then used
a paint package to combine the computer-generated landscapes with the
photographic versions. These were digitally printed using a lightjet printer.
The picturesque gardens produced by Capability Brown and Humphry Repton,
often involved moving huge amounts of earth and creating artificial lakes
in order to realise their vision of the ideal landscape. At Holkham Hall
an entire hill and a large lake were constructed. The seemingly natural
evolution of the land is revealed as having been tightly controlled by
a team of skilled landscape designers, gardeners and grounds staff.
Born in Japan Soju Tao has a BA in Painting from the Chelsea College of
Art and Design and is currently studying an MFA in painting at the Slade
School of Fine Art. He has exhibited at the Great Eastern Hotel, London
and has work in the Ernst and Young Collection.
Tao works generally with recycled canvas and found objects, finding inspiration
in the remnants of their previous life. When met with a blank surface
he starts by breaking down the pristine quality of that surface, creating
disorder and gradually setting down images in very diverse layers, later
rubbing back to rediscover earlier layers and previous impulses. Working
in acrylic, oil and mixed media - from gaffer tape to drinking straws.
His work provides a link to memory, a way of cracking the safe to find
his own internal life, which lends a naive, playful element to the work.
After Graduating from Central Saint Martins College of Art in 2001, Daniel
Wallis took part in 'Mint', an artist led show at a venue in central London
that he helped transform into a temporary Art space. The success of the
work he exhibited led to an invitation from Tate Britain to be part of
the opening events of their Centenary Development, along with five other
artists including Antony Gormley, Sam Taylor-Wood and Damien Hirst. Daniel
has also taken part in the 'So Fun' day of workshops for school children
from across London.
Wallis works directly from photographs of cities, many of which he has
never physically been to, yet through drawing he begins to know well.
As the pen travels across the canvas it reveals the city by mapping out
a path through the streets. Wallis will often work from the same image
again and again, but each time the line taken is completely different
- it guides as much as it is steered. The journey is not just about leaving
a trail, but of the time it took and the spaces it left.
Miranda Whall completed a post-graduate Degree in sculpture at the Royal
Academy Schools in 1996. She was subsequently awarded an ACVA first Base
Award and RSBS fellowship. She has exhibited in Canada, Holland and this
country. She was also awarded a London Arts Development Grant for visual
arts in 2003. Her current projects include a Residency at Grizedale and
a collaboration with members of the Lace Guild.
Whall's Work creates a unique context to represent a relationship between
femininity, nature and the wider external environment. Self portraits
absorbed in celebrations of bodily functions and pleasures are placed
alongside photographed and collected images of things.
The drawn images are arranged, repeated and rotated digitally to form
a seemingly indiscriminate non-hierarchical scenario creating unlikely
and intimate fantasies.
The content of the work is staged within the order of pattern so that
the images are both implicit and explicit, caught within something that
disguises and reveals its implications. The pattern is upset by its own
illicit detail so what appears as delicate is crude, and as innocent is
rude.
Giles Askham
Press Release
and the winner was...
Peterborough Prize
21st June - 22nd August 2003
Peterborough Museum and Art Gallery
This years £5,000 Peterborough Prize was won by Jeremy Gardiner.
Jeremy’s work entitled 'Purbeck Light Years' is an interactive digital
installation, using virtual reality technology to combine characteristics
of painting, drawing and computer animation.and is the first digital piece
to win the coveted prize in its four year history. Jeremy is delighted
to have won and is thrilled that the public has chosen his work ahead
of some excellent competition. “It is a great honour to win the
Peterborough Prize and very important to be participating in an exhibition
at a Museum and Art Gallery that has put digital arts firmly on the agenda.”
the artist said today.
The work will now be purchased for the permanent collection at the Peterborough
Museum and Art Gallery. Jeremy has also kindly offered to donate to the
collection one of the original paintings, which formed the basis of the
work.
Jeremy Gardiner is Professor of Digital Arts at the London College of
Music and Media. He is a graduate of the Royal College of Art in London,
and former Harkness fellow of the Media Lab of the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology. His research interests are in immersive imaging. Recent
projects include the Virtual Gallery of the British National Childrens
Art Competition, supported by the Clore Duffield Foundation and launched
at Tate Modern, London. Purbeck Light Years opens at the Lighthouse, Poole
in September 2003.
We are currently seeking sponsorship to enable us to run this very popular
competition again in the future. Artists selected for this years exhibition
were:
Asnat Austerlitz
Bo Droga
Philip Duckworth and Joanne Jones
Jeremy Gardiner
Myfanwy Johns
Elizabeth LeMoine
Rory MacBeth's
Jane Prophet
Soju Tao
Daniel Wallis
Miranda Whall
curation
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