Arts Council Collection Acquisitions 2017-18

Arts Council Collection Acquisitions 2017–18

Arts Council Collection Acquisitions 2017–18

Contents

Ima-Abasi Okon

4

Appau Jnr Boakye-Yiadom

6

Maeve Brennan

8

Helen Cammock

10

Alejandra Carles-Tolra

12

Nicolas Deshayes

14

Ibrahim El-Salahi

16

Beatrice Gibson

18

Emma Hart

20

Mishka Henner

22

Lubaina Himid

24

John Kippin

26

Matthew Krishanu

28

Paul Maheke

30

Melanie Manchot

32

William McKeown

34

Hardeep Pandhal

36

Laura Phillips

38

Magali Reus

40

Aura Satz

42

John Sheehy

44

Marianna Simnett

48

Caragh Thuring

50

Jessica Warboys

52

Michelle Williams Gamaker

54

3

Ima-Abasi Okon

b. 1981, London, UK. Lives and works in London.

Ima-Abasi Okon’s practice includes video, printmaking, sculpture and painting and explores questions surrounding language, faith and theory. Her multifaceted, sculptural installation Put Something in the Air: The E-s-s-e-n-t-i-a-l Mahalia Jackson Blowing Up DJ Pollie Pop’s Chopped and Screwed Rendition of Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries — Military-Entertainment Complex Dub [Jericho Speak Life!]*(free of legacy)* (2017), consists of two brass vents fixed to the wall of the gallery, jewellery, and a framed Oriented Strand Board (OSB) panel. When discussing her work, the artist describes searching for the opportunity to present a simple gesture that speaks to a range of highly complex subjects.

The vents link the work to the gallery’s ventilation system, whilst the jewellery, a form of adornment, points to female patrimony.

The panel is made of a low-grade sheet material, but heavily coated with Mahogany varnish. The polished finish of the work and shimmering jewellery also refer to customisation and the restyling of objects. Together, the components perform as something they are not, allowing Okon’s gestures to offer alternative narratives.

Put Something in the Air: The E-s-s-e-n-t-i-a-l Mahalia Jackson Blowing Up DJ Pollie Pop’s Chopped and Screwed Rendition of Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries — Military-Entertainment Complex Dub [Jericho Speak Life!]*(Free of Legacy)*, 2017 Polyurethane varnish on board Brass, acoustic sound underlay, artists’ jewellery 80 × 80 cm Brass vent 200 × 30 cm Brass vent 150 × 30 cm Images courtesy of the artist

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Appau Jnr Boakye-Yiadom

b. 1984, London, UK. Lives and works in London.

Appau Jnr Boakye-Yiadom employs a hybrid use of media.

He works with archive materials that include video footage, images, text and recorded sound, alongside ready-made objects, to create installations with multi-layered references.

Plantain Drop (2014) features a photographic print taken in the artist’s mother’s garden in Ghana, which is displayed high on a wall to reflect the height at which the plantain grows. On the ground, a cube monitor displays a pre-recorded video of plantain falling to the ground. There is a makeshift, experimental absurdity to the work. The plantain and its counterpart the banana are laden with cultural references, which the work could be seen to allude to: a phallic symbol in Freudian psychology, the staple banana skin of slapstick comedy, or Andy Warhol’s graphic screen prints. Boakye-Yiadom animates this everyday occurrence, while exploiting the performative possibilities of a cultural commodity.

Plantain Drop, 2014 C-type print, HD video, brass Print 96.1 × 75.5 cm HD video 1 min 37 sec Edition 1 of 3 + 2 AP Image courtesy of the artist

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Maeve Brennan

b. 1990, London, UK. Lives and works in London.

Informed by long term investigative research, Maeve Brennan’s practice examines the historical and political resonance of materials and places. Creating intimacy through proximity with her subjects, she gathers anecdotal evidence to animate sites and narratives.

In The Drift (2017), Brennan traces the shifting economies of objects in contemporary Lebanon. The film follows the gatekeeper of the Roman temples of Niha in the Beqaa Valley; a young mechanic from Britel and an archaeological conservator

The Drift is produced by Chisenhale Gallery, London and Spike

working at the American University of Beirut. Combining

Island, Bristol and commissioned by Chisenhale Gallery; Spike

documentary footage with staged scenes, the work depicts

Island; The Whitworth, The University of Manchester; and Lismore

layered histories and communities. The Drift documents Brennan’s

Castle Arts, Lismore.

encounters with the gatekeeper as he recounts his life’s work restoring and guarding the temple ruins, while the mechanic crosses the Beqaa landscape, searching scrap yards for used automobile parts to transform his BMW car. Inside his workshop, the conservator slowly pieces together fragments of clay artefacts. Forms of maintenance and repair are central to the work, with a focus on the desire to reassemble and rebuild.

Quietly underpinning the film is the urgency of archaeology in the Middle East today, particularly with reference to the destruction and preservation of heritage sites across Syria and Lebanon.

Brennan’s film maps converging lines between the protected relics of ancient temples, smuggled antiquities and exchanged car parts, exploring the care, circulation and shifting value of objects.

The Drift, 2017 HD video with sound 50 min 29 sec Edition 2 of 5 + 2 AP Image courtesy of the artist and Chisenhale Gallery, London

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Helen Cammock

b. 1970, London, UK. Lives and works in London.

Helen Cammock explores history and storytelling through layered, fragmented narratives. Using video, photography, installation, print and performance, she interrogates the ways in which stories are told, and acknowledges those who are rendered invisible by the hierarchy of histories. The artist’s own story also impacts her work.

Having worked as a social worker before becoming an artist, she remains attentive to the structural oppression and inequality across communities she saw during this time.

There’s a Hole in the Sky Part I (2016) was captured in Barbados, and asks questions about human worth and cultural value. In the work, Cammock interacts with workers from two sites: one of the last sugar factories in Barbados and a tourist sugar grind and rum plantation. Through prose and song, the dialogue between the artist and workers develops a disconnect between what is seen and what is heard. Cammock’s work is prefaced by writing, borrowing the words of others to use alongside her own. There’s a Hole in the Sky Part II: Listening to James Baldwin (2016) is set around an imagined conversation with writer James Baldwin. It considers migrations, forced or voluntary, by Black American writers and dancers who moved to Europe in search of work and wider recognition. The piece layers multiple and varied experiences, exploring the dynamics of appropriation and power.

Set in the Docklands in east London, it builds upon Cammock’s interest in failing colonial industries, set against the backdrop There’s a Hole in the Sky Part I, 2016 HD video 19 min 6 sec Edition 1 of 5 + 2 AP

of futuristic new-build flats and state-of-the-art transport links.

There’s a Hole in the Sky Part II: Listening to James Baldwin, 2016 HD video 11 min 10 sec Edition 1 of 5 + 2 AP Images courtesy of the artist

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Alejandra Carles-Tolra

b. 1988, Barcelona, Spain. Lives and works in London, UK.

Alejandra Carles-Tolra is interested in the relationship between individual and group identity and the way in which these may influence one another. Where We Belong (2017) is a body of work exploring themes of belonging, femininity and escapism through a portrayal of Jane Austen devotees. To produce the series, the artist spent time with the group, who recreate and celebrate Jane Austen’s novels. Wearing flowing Regency gowns they come together at special events and recite the author’s work. CarlesTolra’s photographs offer an intimate look into the relationships between the group’s participants. We see them hold hands, dance and embrace. The scenes are ethereal and sensual.

Despite their period costume, reminders of the present day still surface: red nail polish and modern makeup. By acting out their fantasies, the subjects have formed a strong mutual identity.

Carles-Tolra reveals a realm of escapism which yields camaraderie and friendship.

Untitled, from the series Where We Belong, 2017 Studio lustre C-type 180 × 120 cm Untitled, from the series Where We Belong, 2017 Studio lustre C-type 180 × 120 cm Untitled, from the series Where We Belong, 2017 Studio lustre C-type 100 × 150 cm Untitled, from the series Where We Belong, 2017 Studio lustre C-type 30 × 20 cm (total of 4 works) Originally commissioned through the Jerwood/Photoworks Awards, 2017. Images courtesy of the artist and Photoworks

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Nicolas Deshayes

b. 1983, Nancy, France. Lives and works in London, UK.

Nicolas Deshayes’s floor-based sculptures Becoming Soil (2015) explore industrial and anatomical infrastructure that usually remains out of sight. Closely resembling pipes laid out on a construction site ready to be placed underground, they also recall the body’s internal pipework. Deshayes works closely with industrial fabricators to make his sculptures, often employing processes or materials, such as powder-coated steel, that are designed to keep dirt or germs at bay. By staining the pristine surfaces of these sculptures with ceramic transfers of household waste and melted enamel glass, Deshayes has transformed them into what he describes as something ‘toxic or contaminated and therefore closer to something corporeal.’

Becoming Soil, 2015 Vitreous enamel on steel Two parts, 160 × diameter 28.5 cm and 180 × diameter 20 cm Becoming Soil, 2015 Vitreous enamel on steel Two parts, 180 × diameter 14 cm each Becoming Soil, 2015 Vitreous enamel on steel Three parts, 200 × diameter 29.5 cm and two pipes 180 × diameter 14 cm each Images courtesy of the artist and Modern Art, London

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Ibrahim El-Salahi

b. 1930, Omdurman, Sudan. Lives and works in London, UK.

Ibrahim El-Salahi is a pioneer of African and Arabic Modernism, and one of the most influential figures in Sudanese art today.

His paintings and works on paper draw from his vivid imagination, rooted in the Islamic traditions of his homeland, which he fuses with a profound knowledge of European art history, African abstraction and forms of calligraphy.

El-Salahi’s series By His Will We Teach Birds How To Fly was completed in 1969, and combines several of the artist’s key motifs morphing the bird and the human figure. El-Salahi drew inspiration from a habit of his father’s. A devout Sufi, he would pray with one finger pointing in the air, recalling the beak of a bird prevalent in the artist’s dreams.

By His Will, We Teach Birds How To Fly No. 1, 1969 Pen, ink and wash on paper 38 × 56 cm Image courtesy of the artist and Vigo Gallery, London

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Beatrice Gibson

b. 1978, London, UK. Lives and works in London.

Beatrice Gibson’s work explores the relationship between music and film, in particular the link between the scored and the scripted.

Part documentary, part fiction, the script for her film The Future’s Getting Old Like The Rest Of Us (2010) was constructed from the transcripts of a discussion group held over a period of five months with the residents of four of Camden’s Care Homes. Inspired by B.S. Johnson’s experimental novel House Mother Normal: A Geriatric Comedy (1971) it employs the logic of a musical score, the script edited into eight simultaneous monologues.

F for Fibonacci (2014) takes William Gaddis’ modernist novel JR (1975) as its starting point. This tells the story of a gifted 11 year old capitalist who creates the greatest ever virtual empire via the anonymity of his school’s pay phone. Inside the mind of the child protagonist, F for Fibonacci refers to a part in JR in which a televised music lesson is scrambled with a maths class on derivatives. It unfolds through the aesthetics of the video game ‘Minecraft’, featuring images of textbook geometry, graphic scores, physics experiments and cartoon dreams, blended with stock market crashes and algorithms. The film also draws on the work of little-known British experimental educator and composer John Paynter, who advocated creative music-making with emphasis on the importance of music education for children. Following Paynter’s lead, Gibson worked closely with an 11 year old named Clay Barnard Chodzko on a number of the film’s production elements.

The artist and child’s musings on the subject of the protagonist guide the viewer through F for Fibonacci’s hallucinatory soup.

F for Fibonacci, 2014 16 mm and 35 mm transferred to HD video, surround sound 16 min 20 sec Edition 1 of 5 + 1 AP

The Future’s Getting Old Like The Rest Of Us, 2010 16 mm transferred to HD video, stereo sound 48 min Edition 1 of 5 + 1 AP Image courtesy of the artist and Laura Bartlett Gallery, London

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Emma Hart

b. 1974, London, UK. Lives and works in London.

Emma Hart’s multidisciplinary practice includes sculpture, video, photography and performance. Her recent ceramic pieces possess an unruly aesthetic and are often autobiographical, channelling her insecurities and anxieties. Fork Face (2017) is a vivid yellow satellite dish, one of ten which were displayed at Frieze London 2017 in a presentation titled Commercial Breakz.

Here, the plethora of satellite dishes were mounted to a wall, much like an arrangement sometimes found on the exterior of a block of flats. Each dish is individually decorated, representing Hart’s ongoing investigation into pattern, from visual design to our own ruminative behaviours. For Fork Face, the artist portrays herself surrounded by protruding forks. She is simultaneously being prodded and propped up, suggestive of the everyday stresses and discomforts of the human experience.

Fork Face, 2017 Glazed ceramic and steel 67 × 71 × 100 cm Image courtesy of the artist and The Sunday Painter, London

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Mishka Henner

b. 1976, Brussels, Belgium. Lives and works in Manchester, UK.

Mishka Henner’s work often involves the collection of publicly available imagery, which he sources through television and the internet. His appropriative practice explores the use and value of photography and its relationship with contemporary experience.

In the context of his work, the artist remarks that ‘there’s an absurdity to living in an age when everything is photographed.’

To produce his series Dutch Landscapes (2011) he utilises platforms Google Earth and Street View. When Google introduced its free satellite imagery services in 2005, governments concerned about the sudden visibility of locations persuaded the suppliers of this imagery to censor certain sites, in the interest of national security. The Dutch in particular hid hundreds of significant sites including royal palaces, fuel depots and army barracks throughout their country. They imposed bold, multi-coloured polygons over these, rather than the subtler techniques employed in other countries. The results are peculiar landscapes, with sharp aesthetic contrasts between the hidden sites and the rural and urban environments surrounding them. The images appear somewhat ridiculous: their overt and graphic nature only draws attention to what they are intended to hide. Yet this contradiction seems appropriate for the fear of terror that has come to dominate the political landscape over the past two decades.

Unknown Site, Noordwijk aan Zee, South Holland, 2011 Archival pigment print 80 × 90 cm Edition 2 of 5 Willem Lodewijk van Nassau Kazerne, Vierhuizen, Groningen, 2011 Archival pigment print 80 × 90 cm Edition 2 of 5 Images courtesy of the artist

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Lubaina Himid

b. 1954, Zanzibar, Tanzania. Lives and works in Preston, UK.

The work of Lubaina Himid explores cultural history and reclaimed identities. The monochromatic Cotton.com (2002) is inspired by a little known act of solidarity enacted by Manchester mill workers at the time of the American Civil War (1861-64). As President Lincoln moved to abolish slavery, raw cotton supplies from the plantations to British mills dried up. This resulted in mass unemployment, an event known as the Cotton Famine. Despite the high personal cost, the workers’ unions passed a motion in support of Lincoln’s efforts to end slavery. In Cotton.com Himid imagines a conversation carried out between labourers on both sides of the Atlantic, an exchange dependent not upon language but rather pattern. Pattern plays a key part in Himid’s painterly grammar. Often regarded as feminine and merely decorative, it operates in the work as a means of non-literal communication.

She explains, ‘I love the language of pattern, its immense potential for movement, illusion, colour experiments and subliminal political messaging. This...is just part of the exploration of how to imply invisible influences without explanation but without slipping into the abstract. The patterns are narratives.’

The work is completed by a long brass panel, with inscribed text adapted from one written by a plantation inspector and selected for its perverse romanticising of a woman’s enforced labour. A vocal feminist and defender of women’s rights, by rephrasing the text to the labourer’s perspective, Himid empowers the woman to speak back to the male gaze.

Cotton.com, 2002 Eighty-five oil on canvas panels, brass strip Dimensions variable Images courtesy of the artist and Hollybush Gardens, London Installation view, Spike Island, Bristol

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John Kippin

b. 1950, London, UK. Lives and works in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK.

John Kippin uses photography to interrogate the ways in which the pictorial landscape is constructed and perceived. He explores the idea of the landscape as a palimpsest, which is continuously being overwritten and changed to represent contemporary concerns within society, politics and culture. Kippin is also interested in commenting on our relationships with our environ­ ment and surroundings, together with constructing visual interpretations of the past. His work Prayer Meeting, Windermere (1992) captures a gathering of Muslims in the Lake District.

In this image, Kippin challenges traditional depictions of the quintessentially British countryside by framing it within contempo­ rary culture, and documenting social and environmental change.

Prayer Meeting (Windemere), 1992 Pigment print 76 × 71 cm Edition 3 of 25 Image courtesy of the artist

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Matthew Krishanu

b. 1980, Bradford, UK. Lives and works in London.

Matthew Krishanu’s subject matter is usually autobiographical, set in places with which he has a close connection. His most recent paintings centre on two boys (the artist and his brother) growing up in Bangladesh, and their experience of a complex world that includes expatriates, missionaries, and expansive landscapes.

For Girl with Book (2012), Krishanu initially drew the composition from his imagination, then staged the scene with a sitter and props in a room in Brighton, UK, which he then photographed.

The painting is based on a combination of the drawing and photographs. The work is partly inspired by Mexican votive paintings and Indian miniatures, as well as artists Edward Hopper and Frida Kahlo. Ordination (2017) is a painting based on a family photograph taken in the 1980s of the artist’s father ordaining a new priest in a church in Bangladesh.

Skeleton (2014) depicts a scene based on both a memory and a photograph. Krishanu and his brother are seen standing with the bones of a cow which is missing its forelegs. They have been confronted by death, and seem ill at ease. The photograph was taken beside the Brahmaputra River following the floods of 1988 in Mymensingh. Boy and Mask (2017) depicts Krishanu’s brother as a boy, standing in front of a patterned background upon which hangs a Bangladeshi mask of a tiger. The boy is painted with closed eyes, and the mask appears to be looking at him.These two works are part of a series of paintings titled Another Country (2012–18). As Krishanu explains, ‘The paintings are about stepping into ‘another country’ – one created from a combination of old photographs, memory and imagination.’

Girl with Book, 2012 Acrylic on canvas 75 × 60 cm Ordination, 2017 Oil on canvas 240 × 180 cm Photo: Peter Mallet Skeleton, 2014 Oil on canvas 150 × 200 cm Boy and Mask, 2017 Oil on canvas 70 x 55 cm Images courtesy of the artist

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Paul Maheke

b.1985, Brive-la-Gaillarde, France. Lives and works in London, UK.

Paul Maheke has a varied and often collaborative body of work.

Most recently he has worked with performance and video to create works that disrupt representations of queer Blackness, which have grown out of Western discourse. He shies away from aligning his work with academia, preferring to think of it as poetical over theoretical.

Maheke’s current research imagines the body as an archive, using its waters as pathways to information and knowledge in order to address how memory and identity are formed and constituted.

Tropicalité, l’Île et l’Exote (2014) is a silent French/English subtitled video, which considers the notion of islands and bodies as colonised spaces and territories as well as possible sites of resistance. Featuring sweeping seascapes and glorious marine life, the footage was shot on the artificial island of Vassivière in France, and the tropical French overseas region of La Réunion in the Indian Ocean. The view later switches to the artist performing a spirited, seemingly improvised dance inside what appears to be an empty swimming pool. The piece describes the empowerment and decolonisation of one’s body, as well as exploring concepts such as otherness, exoticism and subjectivity.

Tropicalité, l’Île et l’Exote, 2014 HD video with subtitles (silent) 12 min 50 sec Edition 1 of 3 + 1 AP Image courtesy of the artist and Galerie Sultana, Paris

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Melanie Manchot

b. 1966, Witten, Germany. Lives and works in London, UK.

Melanie Manchot’s diverse and research-driven practice employs photography, video, film and sound. Her long-standing areas of enquiry range from portraiture to participation and performance, to questions of individual and collective identities. Situated at the threshold between the documentary and the theatrical, Manchot’s work frequently involves an engagement with strangers.

Dance (All Night, London) (2017) is a collective dance performance which debuted at Art Night, a free contemporary arts festival in London. Manchot worked in collaboration with 10 dance schools from around the east of the city, each representing a different style of movement, from Cuban Rueda to Chinese Dance and Argentine Tango. Beginning in the early evening, dancers paraded through the streets, coming together in Exchange Square, Broadgate, where they danced alongside each other. From 10pm to 1am the square was illuminated and transformed into a temporary stage and taken over by teachers from each school offering dance lessons to the public. The project encouraged audiences to come and dance in the square, to experience vibrant rhythms and learn something new. When the lessons were over, the space became an open dance floor until the early hours of the morning, with playlists and headphones available via a silent disco.

Dance (All Night, London) was commissioned by Art Night and made possible by Art Fund.

Dance (All Night, London), 2017 3 channel video installation comprising 4K and HD video, double Stereo sound 30 min Edition 1 of 5 Images courtesy of the artist

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William McKeown

b. 1962, Tyrone, Northern Ireland. d. 2011, Edinburgh, UK.

William McKeown is best known for his luminous abstract paintings that explore states of mind, such as happiness and freedom, as well as qualities of nature like light, air and sky. His works in oil on linen have highly finished surfaces achieved through meticulously applied thin washes of paint. The titles of his works, such as Turning Buttercups #2 (2008) typically point to memories, emotions or ideals. The artist also created wallpaper, which sees the gallery transformed into an artificial domestic environment. Cloud Cuckoo Land (2004–2018) is a vibrant design featuring cuckoos perched casually on branches with nooses around their necks. The artist’s paintings are displayed against the wallpaper, appearing on the wall like small windows. The canvases draw the eye away from the ill-fated birds, offering a glimpse into the openness and expansiveness of light and colour.

Cloud Cuckloo Land, 2004–2018 Digitally printed wallpaper Dimensions variable Turning Buttercups #2, 2008 Oil on linen 46 × 46 cm Images courtesy of Kerlin Gallery, Dublin

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Hardeep Pandhal

b. 1985, Birmingham, UK. Lives and works in Glasgow, Scotland.

Hardeep Pandhal’s work employs lurid colour and content to create work in an array of media. His sketches and texts borrow from a variety of sources such as comic books and political satire, while his collaborations with his mum span crochet, knitting and embroidery.

His animation A Nightmare on BAME Street (2018) is an urban tableau set in a skewed version of Birmingham, in the area where the artist grew up. In an imagined outdoor cinema, loitering characters envision excessive scenes in thought bubbles, which also carry double entendres from the African-American verbal duelling game known as The Dozens.

Baba Deep Thing by Mum (2014) consists of a white wool sweater incorporating the decapitated Sikh martyr Baba Deep Singh, his head at the end of one arm and a blood-covered sword sewn to the other. It is inspired by the legend, which tells that Baba Deep continued to battle his Afghan enemies even as the blood drained from his headless body. But just as the distance is vast between the artist and this 18th century tale, Pandhal and his mother are divided by language, he speaks little Punjabi, while she speaks little English. What is lost in translation is found, hinting at things that are known without being spoken.

Baba Deep Thing by Mum, 2014 Synthetic wool 150 × 60 × 15 cm Untitled, 2017 Printed plastic, powder coated steel 180 x 150 x 50 cm approx A Nightmare on BAME Street, 2018 4K animation 10 min 32 sec Edition 1 of 3 + 2 AP Images courtesy of the artist

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Laura Phillips

b. 1986, Bristol, UK. Lives and works in Bristol.

Laura Phillips’ interests lie in obsolescence and precariousness, which she uses as devices to explore the relationships between language, culture and cognition. Geoluread & Genie (2017) is a digital animation, created from hand-processed 16mm film. In the artwork title, Phillips refers to the earliest usage of ‘orange’ as a word in English. Before the English-speaking world was exposed to the fruit, the colour was referred to as yellow-red or ‘geoluread’ in Old English. The work itself features three hovering orbs, which become filled with flashes of colour and fragmented text. Four words appear: Orange, Mother, Go and Blue. These reportedly formed the limited vocabulary of Genie Wiley, the American ‘feral child’ who was taken into custody in 1970 following severe neglect and social isolation. Phonetic utterances provide the soundtrack to the work. These are drawn from Láadan, a feminist constructed language created in 1982 by Suzette Haden Elgin in her science fiction book Native Tongue. Láadan contains a number of words that are used to make unambiguous statements that include how one feels about what one is saying. According to Elgin, this is designed to counter the limitations imposed on women by male-centred language.

Geoluread & Genie, 2017 Single screen 16:9 HD animation, stereo sound 4 min Edition 1 of 2 + 2 AP Images courtesy of the artist

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Magali Reus

b. 1981, The Hague, the Netherlands. Lives and works in London, UK.

Magali Reus’s sculptures recall functional or commonplace objects – fridges, seating, pots and pans – whose identity and purpose have become skewed or obscured. Interested in the graphic language of the objects that surround us, Reus identifies and makes use of formal qualities – not least colour, texture and finish – that carry specific associations, or invite ‘a kind of meandering emotional projection.’

Reus’s wall-based sculpture Leaves (Harp, January) (2015) is part of a series of works that resemble enlarged padlocks, and contain visual references to digital calendars or diaries. Seeing the sculptures in this series as a ‘metaphor for content just out of reach’, she comments that: ‘I became interested in the mechanism of locks because they are inherently such mysterious objects – secrecy is integral to their functioning.’

Leaves (Harp, January), 2015 Model board, phosphated aluminium, silicone rubber, pigments, powder coated, zinc plated, etched and anodized aluminium, steel 42 × 61 × 15 cm Image courtesy of the artist and The approach, London Photo: Plastiques

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Aura Satz

b. 1974, Barcelona, Spain. Lives and works in London, UK.

Aura Satz is interested in modes of heightened perception and sensory disorientation, as well as psychoacoustics and auditory illusion. In her sound sculptures, films and installations she probes obsolete technologies, teasing them apart and approaching them from new perspectives. Her sound piece Dial Tone Drone (2014) looks back to the early days of telephony, when calls were dialled by switchboard operators. This human intervention was later replaced by the automatic dial tone. Here, the dial tone is composed into experimental drone music, evoking the underly­ ing hum of the city and tuning in and out of human speech.

Between the Bullet and the Hole (2016) is a video installation which centres around the elusive and complex effects of war on women’s role in early computing. The work features new and archival high speed bullet photography, electric spark imagery, bullet sound wave imagery, forensic ballistic photography, slide rulers, punch cards and computer diagrams. Like a frantic animated storyboard, it explores the flickering space between the frames. Interpolation, which was the main task of the women studying ballistics during World War II, describes the act of guessing missing data using only two known data points. Satz’s work aims to explore this gap and open it up to interrogation, through questioning how we read other gaps such as those between bullet and hole, perpetrator and victim, and presence Dial Tone Drone, 2014 Wav file, telephone mouthpiece for MP3 player 14 min Edition 1 of 5 + 1 AP

and absence.

Between the Bullet and the Hole, 2016 HD video 12 mins Edition 1 of 5 + 1 AP Images courtesy of the artist

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John Sheehy

b. 1949, Kerry, Ireland. Lives and works in London, UK.

John Sheehy began painting at the age of 51, and over the past 18 years has produced a vast body of work that includes painting, printmaking and sculpture, in addition to playwriting, poetry and music. His paintings range between portraits, landscapes and the purely abstract, and often foreground personal or biographical recollections, evoking the artist’s travels and his native Ireland.

The pace at which Sheehy produces work is extraordinary, and is often limited by the availability of materials to hand including canvas, paper, roof tiles, window blinds and paving slabs. Even his largest paintings, some 10 by 20 feet in size, take less than an hour to complete. Sheehy has produced a staggering collection of works which he considers as a single, total narrative.

With reference to both rural Ireland and London street scenes, Sheehy’s paintings detail seemingly familiar or everyday moments. He frequently returns to vernacular subjects which might initially appear folksy: sailing ships, terraced houses, shoeshiners and chimney sweeps; however, when repeated across numerous works they gain a talismanic, otherworldly character. In particular, the recurring image of a watchful rider on horseback, as in Quickest Quickly (year unknown), functions as a representation of the artist himself. Rather than nostalgic, these works are a record of lived experience.

Last Orders, date unknown Acrylic on board 122 × 63 cm

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Thank You For Your Custom, date unknown Oil on un-stretched canvas 218.5 × 202 cm

The Chimney is Swept, date unknown Acrylic on board 80 x 60 cm Gift of the artist and Studio Voltaire, 2018

Quickest Quickly, date unknown Acrylic on board 54.2 x 70.5 cm

Music in the Frying-Pan Pub Brick Lane in the Sixties, date unknown Acrylic on suitcase 50.5 x 72 x 23 cm Gift of the artist and Studio Voltaire, 2018 Images courtesy of the artist and Studio Voltaire, London. Photos: Andy Keate

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Marianna Simnett

b. 1986, London, UK. Lives and works in London.

Marianna Simnett works with moving image, installation and performance. Her works examine the sense of intimacy as well as alienation we experience with our own bodies, featuring unflinching depictions of many commonplace phobias such as needles, cockroaches, blood and medical procedures. Simnett also writes songs that are performed by her cast, which lend an air of innocence and lightness to her densely layered storytelling.

The Needle and the Larynx (2016) documents the artist in the hands of a voice surgeon as he injects her cricothyroid muscle with Botox, effectively paralysing the muscle and lowering her voice. It is a procedure usually done for men who don’t perceive their voices to be low enough. In slow-motion, we watch the surgeon fill a syringe, place electrodes on the artist’s neck, and plunge a needle into her throat. A multipart soundtrack voiced by Simnett recounts a fable of a girl who wants her voice lowered “so that... it is closer to the groans outside that keep me turning in the night” and threatens the reluctant doctor with a plague of mosquitos should he refuse. Told over a gradually building score of cello and a swelling pitch of mosquitos, the story is interwoven with a melancholy pop song and a short history of Botox. In her newly deepened voice, we hear the artist speak forty-eight hours later of the unexpected trauma of the procedure and the weakness she is experiencing. Across her practice, Simnett’s performances seek to draw out an empathy on the part of the viewer.

The Needle and the Larynx, 2016 Digital HD video with surround sound 15 min 17 sec Edition 2 of 5 + 2 AP Image courtesy of the artist

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Caragh Thuring

b. 1972, Brussels, Belgium. Lives and works in London, UK.

Often working directly onto untreated linen rather than the traditional white canvas, Caragh Thuring creates what she refers to as ‘speculative environments’. The artist collaborated with weavers from Suffolk and Belgium to produce her most recent paintings, producing canvases which are woven with images of her previous works. This approach, which combines handcraft and industrial process, brings to light Thuring’s continued interest in sequence and repetition. Inspired by time spent in Scotland observing the comings and goings of HM Naval Base, Clyde, these works feature looming maritime vessels merged with painted tartans.

In her previous paintings, human presence was only alluded to by the inclusion of industrial objects such as cranes or ropes. In Ardyne Point (2016) the outline of what appears to be two women swims into view, protruding from the brick-patterned background.

High-heeled shoes, embellished by the use of gold leaf, shimmer at the edge of the canvas. Disjointed text overlays the scene: ‘CORMORANT ALPHA’, an oil-rig platform which was built at Ardyne Point; and ‘USS HOLLAND’, referring to the US Navy’s first commissioned submarine.

Ardyne Point, 2016 Bitumen, graphite, oil, gold leaf on cotton and linen 243.7 × 182.7 cm Purchased with the assistance of the Art Fund Image courtesy of the artist and Thomas Dane Gallery, London

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Jessica Warboys

b. 1977, Newport, Wales. Lives and works in Berlin, Germany and Suffolk, UK.

Jessica Warboys spans film, performance and painting – diverse practices that are closely related in her work. Tremolo (2017) is an installation by Warboys and Morten Norbye Halvorsen. The work uses sound to modulate lights which in turn articulate, shift and animate the form of a sculptural painting of the same name.

Shadows and highlights expand the form of the painting, which calls to mind the abstract reliefs of Ben Nicholson. It is centred on a wall flanked by two light strips, which face the painting at an angle so that they form, when in unison, an even illumination of the piece. The audio signal also mirrors the positions of the lights, left and right. The sound element of the piece unfolds as a series of gravelly resonating sounds, reminiscent of the organ and dulcimer, a musical string instrument. The entire space hums and seems to swell, animating the wall piece which takes on the quality of a mysterious, all-seeing eye.

Tremolo, 2017 Wood, PVC pipe, acrylic paint 81 × 81 × 27 cm 20 min Sound and light composed by Morten Norbye Halvorsen Image courtesy of the artist

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Michelle Williams Gamaker

b. 1979, London, UK. Lives and works in London.

Michelle Williams Gamaker works with performance and video assuming fictional as well as documentary modes, to consider the intergenerational effects of colonialism. Her pieces have explored migratory aesthetics, mental health, and the emotional complexities of capitalism and gender ideology.

For House of Women (2016), the artist recasts the role of a silent, dancing girl named Kanchi in the film Black Narcissus (1947). The coveted role was played by a seventeen year old Jean Simmons, who as a white English actor wore dark makeup and a jewel in her nose to become the “exotic temptress” of Rumer Godden’s novel of the same name. In her video, Williams Gamaker auditions only Indian expat or first generation British Asian women and nonbinary individuals living in London. Unlike the original role, in House of Women the Kanchi of the 21st century speaks. Shot on 16mm film, the four candidates, Krishna Istha, Jasdeep Kandola, Tina Mander and Arunima Rajkumar introduce themselves to an anonymous reader. In the staged conditions of an audition, they feel the glare of the studio lights and the camera’s gaze. As a result, the viewer may find themselves empathising with the young hopefuls as they compete for a role.

House of Women, 2016 16mm Film transferred to HDV 14 min 5 sec Edition 1 of 3 Image courtesy of the artist

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Members of the Acquisitions Committee 2017–18 Jill Constantine, Director, Arts Council Collection Peter Heslip, Director, Visual Arts, Arts Council England Ralph Rugoff, Director, Hayward Gallery The external advisers to the Acquisitions Committee for 2017–18 Brian Cass Anthea Hamilton Helen Legg Morgan Quaintance Chair of the Acquisitions Committee for 2017–18 Maria Balshaw, Director, Tate Unless otherwise stated, all works are © the artist.

Texts by Grace Beaumont and Lucy Biddle.

Graphic Design by Catherine Nippe. www.cnippe.com

The Arts Council Collection is based at Southbank Centre, London and at Longside, Yorkshire Sculpture Park,

Wakefield. For further information about the Arts Council Collection, please visit artscouncilcollection.org.uk

To enquire about borrowing work from the Arts Council Collection, email loans@southbankcentre.co.uk

To enquire about acquisitions and gifts to the Arts Council Collection, email acquisitions@southbankcentre.co.uk