Unit One Professional
Gallery and Exhibition Experience
Chaiya Arts Award - ‘Awe and Wonder’ exhibition 2023
Simultaneously Sublime, 2018, Oil on canvas, blue card, and yellow card, 160 x 120 x 7 cm Size: (w) 160cm; (h) 120cm; (d) 7cm, Weight: 9kg
My painting, Simultaniously Sublime has been selected for inclusion in the Chaiya Art Awards 2023 exhibition with this years theme, ‘AWE + WONDER.’ The exhibition will be held on London’s Southbank 7-16th April 2023 at the gallery@oxo and The Bargehouse and all exhibiting works are shortlisted for all prizes available.
Oxo Tower Wharf, Barge House St, London SE1 9PH
The sublime is a long-understood term in art once attributed to romantic landscape paintings and literature, tending to inspire awe and wonder because of elevated quality of greatness or grandeur. By depositing glossy images from online sources and commercial magazines into painting, I reflect the current preoccupation with the problem of positing one’s identity with the continuous input of sublime media images and aesthetics. Through painting, this disrupts seamless viewing and challenges our passive intake of images, with the modern inundation of a media-dominated world.
In my practice, I aim to subvert the way we look at pictures with new ways of image-making. The language shifts when the perception of the viewer is altered by the tactile presence of the work, semantically pointing to material attributes of pictures as objects. Lifting the images out of their original context, the works allow a new transitory nature that evokes free association and perception. Indispensable to my practice, I intentionally use the illusionistic and tactile properties of painting to emphasise interactivity, questioning the nature of reality and reproduction. The works offer a startling duplexity to the contemporary image—comprising the subjective and the objective, the internal and the external, the real and the fictitious.
Arts SU, Xhibit 2023
15 Love, Still Life Series, Oil on canvas, MDF, pine wood frame, enamel paint, fluorescent green acrylic plastic, and chrome mirror screws 2019 101 x 132 x 7 cm
My painting ‘15 Love’ from my Still Life series was chosen as part of the Arts SU’s longest running open call, Xhibit 2023. As well as the exhibition, I will also be able to attend a Professional Development programme: a day of talks reflecting areas of consideration pertaining to Xhibit. On Wednesday 16th November I attended a development day for Xhibit, where I was able to find out more about Xhibit and its history; discuss the possible exhibition hosting venue and possible dates; learn about the Professional Development programme to be held in the coming months; steps for readying the work and ensuring that it's available plus installation troubleshooting; gain some initial feedback from the judge; meet other selected student network and commence community building; find out more about the catalogue; and ask any questions about the opportunity. Although details are yet to be confirmed, Koppel X gallery on Regent Street at Piccadilly Circus has been suggested as a likely venue to be held sometime in the spring term.
QEST Scholarship
Having passed the second stage by the skills assessor, I was invited to interview for a QEST scholarship at Buckingham Place on Thursday 20th October. The QEST scholarship, or the Queen Elizabeth Scholarship Trust, is a UK-based organization that provides funding and support to skilled artisans and craftspeople in traditional and heritage crafts. The scholarship is open to UK citizens and is awarded to individuals who demonstrate exceptional skill and potential in their chosen craft, with the goal of helping them to further their training and development. The scholarship covers a wide range of crafts including, furniture making, textiles, leather, ceramics, and many more.
Recipients of the scholarship receive financial support to assist with the costs of training and materials, as well as mentoring and networking opportunities to help them establish themselves in their chosen field. I applied for this scholarship to help fund my MA course at Camberwell, however, the QEST scholarship is highly competitive, and recipients are considered to be among the most talented and promising craftspeople in the UK. Although it was disheartening to not have been awarded the scholarship, I humbled myself in knowing that I had been invited to interview and believe the interview experience proves invaluable to my personal and professional development as an art practitioner.