Arts Council Collection Acquisitions 2016-17

Arts Council Collection Acquisitions 2016 –17

Arts Council Collection Acquisitions 2016 –17

Contents

Larry Achiampong and David Blandy

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Simeon Barclay

6

Phyllida Barlow CBE

8

Rana Begum

10

Matthew Darbyshire

12

Sean Edwards

14

Tim Etchells

16

Denzil Forrester

18

Gareth Griffith

20

Seamus Harahan

24

Andy Holden

26

Mawuena Kattah

28

Sophie Michael

30

Stuart Middleton

32

Aleksandra Mir

34

Jacqueline Morreau

36

Ryan Mosley

38

Oscar Murillo

40

Karl Ohiri

42

Ciara Phillips

44

Amalia Pica

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Joanna Piotrowska

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Joanna Price

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Charlotte Prodger

54

Yinka Shonibare MBE

56

Simon Starling

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Mark Aerial Waller

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Andrea Luka Zimmerman

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Larry Achiampong and David Blandy b. 1984, London. Lives and works in London. b. 1976, London. Lives and works in Brighton and London.

Artists Larry Achiampong and David Blandy share an interest in popular culture and post-colonialism. In both their collaborative and solo projects they examine communal and personal heritage by way of performance, digital imagery and video.

The series FF Gaiden is part of an ongoing collaboration between the artists and wider communities examining the writings of the anti-colonial thinker Frantz Fanon (1925–61). ‘Gaiden’ is a Japanese word that means ‘side story’. In the gaming world, it refers to a spin-off or secondary version of an existing game.

During a residency in Norway in 2016 the artists worked closely with paperless migrants in Oslo and the organisation Mennisker i Limbo (People in Limbo), to discuss issues surrounding identity, technology and contemporary culture. These discussions, and further close collaboration, resulted in a video work that makes use of the virtual space of the computer game Grand Theft Auto V to create ‘a complex tapestry of stories’ about ‘migration, cultural history and social change’.

Commissioned by PRAKSIS Oslo, Norway. In collaboration with Mennisker i Limbo (People in Limbo), in partnership with PNEK, Atelier Nord, and Notam.

FF Gaiden: Delete, 2016 Ultra HD colour video, stereo sound 16:9, 33 min Edition 1 of 3 + 2 AP Image courtesy of the artists

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Simeon Barclay

b. 1975, Huddersfield. Lives and works in Leeds.

Simeon Barclay’s multidisciplinary practice draws on a range of influences and references – including sports journalism, fashion magazines, British working-class history and Afro-Caribbean culture – to explore memory, gender and the mediated image.

Reflecting on and echoing the way that images are encountered in popular culture, An Arrangement on Blue (Swamp Rat Skank) (2015) features a pair of legs striding down a catwalk, an anxiouslooking Jerry the cartoon mouse, and an infamous image of footballers Paul Gascoigne and Vinnie Jones, taken in 1988. In Handicap (2016), Barclay has reproduced Andy Capp – the character from Reg Smythe’s cartoon strip about a working class figure who never worked – in luminous neon.

Handicap, 2016 Multicolour neon 90 × 40 × 2.5 cm Image courtesy of the artist An Arrangement on Blue (Swamp Rat Skank), 2015 Aluminium, vinyl adhesive, acrylic 117.5 × 175 × 2.5 cm Image courtesy of the artist

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Phyllida Barlow CBE

b. 1944, Newcastle upon Tyne. Lives and works in London.

Phyllida Barlow uses common construction materials including plaster, plywood, foam and wire mesh to form large-scale sculptures that disrupt and subvert the spaces they inhabit.

Despite their considerable size, Barlow sees her work as ‘antimonumental’. untitled: dunce (2015) was made for the artist’s 2015 solo exhibition Phyllida Barlow: set at The Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh, which saw Barlow ‘turn the gallery … upside down’ in order to create what she has described as an ‘inside-out, back-to-front experience’ for her audience.

Many of Barlow’s sculptures begin as works on paper. For the artist, both painting and drawing provide ‘a way of testing out a possible work’s potential for realisation: how it might or could be, as well as what, where, how big or small; as well as asking what kind of object is it, how much space it needs or owns.’ untitled: cementpost (2015) and untitled: frames (2015) are preparatory studies for works in Phyllida Barlow: set. untitled: dunce, 2015 Timber, polystyrene, paint, paper, wire mesh, cement, plaster, scrim, polyurethane foam, plywood, bonding plaster, polyurethane foam 310 × 290 × 320 cm Installation view: ‘Phyllida Barlow: set’ The Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh, Scotland June 27 – October 18, 2015 Image courtesy of Hauser & Wirth Photo: Ruth Clark untitled: cementpost, 2015 Acrylic on watercolour paper 24 × 32 cm Gift of the artist, 2016 untitled: frames, 2015 Acrylic on watercolour paper 23.9 × 32 cm Gift of the artist, 2016

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Rana Begum

b. 1977, Sylhet, Bangladesh. Lives and works in London.

Bangladeshi-British artist Rana Begum creates sculptural works inspired by minimalism, urban architecture and her early childhood memories of traditional Islamic art. For her ongoing series Fold, Begum works with industrial materials including powder-coated aluminium and steel to create wall-mounted sculptures of an origami-like construction. The bright undersides of these works – painted with fluorescent pinks, oranges and yellows – cast colourful reflections onto the walls on which they are hung. With these sculptures, as with all of her work, Begum hopes to create a ‘simultaneous experience of calm and exhilaration’, and engages with what she calls ‘a common language of colour, form and pattern’ that ‘transcends nationality, class and gender’.

No. 429 SFold, 2013 Paint on mirror finish steel 55 × 62 × 19 cm Image courtesy of the artist Photo: Philip White

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Matthew Darbyshire

b. 1977, Cambridge. Lives and works in London.

In his sculptural assemblages Matthew Darbyshire reflects on and examines the objects that we surround ourselves with, from furniture and clothing to cooking utensils and artworks. CAPTCHA No. 21 – Doryphoros (2015), made for Darbyshire’s 2015 solo exhibition at Manchester Art Gallery, is a version of a fifth-century Greek sculpture. Although the original bronze sculpture of Doryphoros – cast between 480 and 400 BCE – has been lost, a Roman copy in marble remains. To make his own ‘copy’ of this famous sculpture, Darbyshire purchased a 3D scan of the object online, before painstakingly building his figure from layer upon layer of hand-cut, hand-painted polycarbonate. Darbyshire often makes use of contemporary processes and materials in his work, but does so critically. As he explains, his work is often ‘driven by a desire, albeit a naïve one, to wrestle back the right to make images and objects from today’s monopolising digital means.’

CAPTCHA No. 21 – Doryphoros, 2015 Multi-wall polycarbonate 224 × 75 × 75 cm Image courtesy of the artist Gift of the artist, 2017

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Sean Edwards

b. 1980, Cardiff. Lives and works in Abergavenny.

Interested in things that get ‘left behind’ or ‘overlooked’, Sean Edwards makes use of photography, installation and moving image to explore the sculptural potential of the everyday. In 2009 Edwards undertook a residency in the Maelfa shopping centre in Llanedeyrn on the outskirts of Cardiff, close to where he grew up.

Built in the 1970s around a block of high-rise flats in a council estate, the Maelfa shopping centre was once a well-used and popular institution, but later fell into disrepair. It is now the subject of a multi-million pound regeneration scheme. During his residency at the centre, Edwards made a series of works stemming from close observation of the near-derelict space. One of these, the slow-paced silent film Maelfa (2010), offers long gliding shots of the building’s interior surfaces. Meditative and sombre, it reflects both on the disappearance of once vibrant communities, and failed utopian aspirations.

Maelfa, 2010 Single-channel video 15 min Edition 1 of 3 + 2 AP Image courtesy of the artist and Limoncello, London

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Tim Etchells

b. 1962, Sheffield. Lives and works in London and Sheffield.

The city as a construct figures prominently in Tim Etchells’s visual art, performances and fiction. At the start of his 20-part text work, City Changes (2008) Etchells introduces – in black and white – a nameless city in which nothing ever changes. In the prints that follow, he rewrites and distorts this text, painting a preposterous picture of a place in which change is endemic and nothing is stable. Each amendment, addition or omission that takes place is captured and colour-coded, laying bare the process of writing.

The sequence concludes with a multi-coloured account of the same city that has by now undergone a complete metamorphosis.

Speaking about City Changes, Etchells says: ‘I was fascinated by the language that talks cities up (and talks them down) in everything from travel guides to fiction. These kinds of stories are always part of a conversation about what we want our lives to be, about imagining futures.’

City Changes, 2008 20 inkjet prints 21 × 30 cm (each) Image courtesy of the artist and VITRINE, London City Changes, 2008 20 inkjet prints 21 × 30 cm (each) Image courtesy of the artist and VITRINE, London Photo: Hugo Glendinning

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Denzil Forrester

b. 1956, Hermitage, Grenada. Lives and works in Cornwall.

As a student at the Royal College of Art in the early 1980s, Denzil Forrester spent time in all-night reggae and blues clubs creating loose, gestural drawings that he later translated into large-scale paintings. Forrester carried over his approach to drawing – ‘quick and without thinking too much’, guided by what he was ‘seeing and experiencing’ – into his painting practice. He describes his painting Cottage Lover (1997) as a ‘mixture of my nightclub painting and the interior of my family cottage in Cornwall’, explaining that ‘the painting features a couple in the fire of love, love like a thief in the night, love that comes and goes, leaving burning desires in its path. It’s a moonlit night in Splatt Cottage: the moon, stairs, table, floor, window and front door are jumping to Cottage Lover’s rhythm. The thief of love wants to escape, but the movement, action and expression of Cottage Lover have him spellbound, to stay and play on.’

Cottage Lover, 1997 Oil on canvas 183 × 122 cm Image courtesy of the artist

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Gareth Griffith

b. 1940, Bangor. Lives and works in Bangor.

Gareth Griffith makes small-scale sculptural constructions from found objects. After creating these sculptures, the artist paints them, resulting in pairs of artworks that function as unusual double-acts. Speaking about his work, the artist has emphasised his interest in the organic way that it evolves, as well as its ability to surprise him. Walking Konrad (2012) is part of a large series of paintings, drawings, collage and sculptures based on the fifteenth-century painting The Synagogue by Konrad Witz. In this painting, a lone female figure dressed in a yellow robe is depicted in a small, enclosed space. Griffith was interested in the prominence of the colour yellow in this piece, which he first viewed in Johannes Itten’s book The Elements of Colour fifty years ago. Walking Konrad is assembled from assorted plastic items, including a partially melted bright yellow container, which stands in for the enclosed woman’s flowing robes.

Walking Konrad, 2012 Plastic 28 x 18 x 18 x 17 cm Image courtesy of the artist and Gregory Byatt

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Go La, 2016 –17 Plastic board, paint 26 x 15 x 12 cm Image courtesy of the artist and Gregory Byatt Keninld, 2016 –17 Wooden board, paint, plastic, mirror, ceramic 30 x 96 x 18 cm Image courtesy of the artist and Gregory Byatt Balzac’s Hardon, 2016–17 Wooden board, paint, plastic, metal 36 × 53 × 10 cm Image courtesy of the artist and Gregory Byatt

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Seamus Harahan

b. 1968, London. Lives and works in Belfast.

The video works of Seamus Harahan are characterised by their prolonged takes, candid view points and gritty CCTV-style footage. Using a hand-held camera, Harahan explores the urban environment in all its incidental and occasionally brutal detail.

Cold Open (Version 1) (2014) is a video-montage made up of six sequences from a larger series filmed in north Belfast over the course of a year. During one of the sequences, the soundtrack of a couple discussing the husband’s drinking habits is accompanied by apparently unconnected visuals of rain-soaked branches. Later, a group of teenage boys are observed play-fighting. In the final sequence, a group of young people are shown gathered around a pram. Harahan, who is interested in what he calls the ‘dislocation of the familiar’, often uses music to achieve this sense of displacement. In Cold Open, his musical sources range from traditional Gaelic to heavy metal and drum and bass.

Cold Open (Version 1), 2014 Single-channel video 13 min, 28 sec Image courtesy of Gimpel Fils, London

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Andy Holden

b. 1982, Bedfordshire. Lives and works in Bedfordshire.

Laws of Motion in a Cartoon Landscape (2011–16) is the result of artist and musician Andy Holden’s five-year project on the laws of physics in cartoons. Holden, who describes the work as ‘a lecture on cartoons, and also a cartoon lecture’, acts as our guide through an animated landscape populated by well-known characters including Bugs Bunny and Wile E Coyote. Drawing on the work of Greek philosophers and Stephen Hawking, Holden identifies and unpicks ten laws of cartoon physics, the first of which is that ‘anybody suspended in space will remain in space until made aware of its situation’.

Holden, who first learnt to draw by copying cartoons, argues that ‘the golden age of cartoons’ offered ‘a prophetic glimpse’ into the world in which we live. Studying them, he suggests, will help us better understand the events of our contemporary landscape, not least the 2008 financial crisis and President Donald Trump.

Laws of Motion in a Cartoon Landscape, 2011–16 Two-channel video with vinyl wall text 57 min Edition 7 of 7 + Exhibition Copy Image courtesy of the artist

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Mawuena Kattah

b. 1975, London. Lives and works in London.

Mawuena Kattah’s work reflects her interest in pattern, colour, form and the figure. Over a number of years, she has developed a significant body of work that includes paintings, ceramics and textiles. Her paintings Auntie Amelia (2016), Me and Mum Looking at the Pots (2016) and Auntie Comfort (2016) are based on photographs of her close and extended family and friends from Ghana. In these works, she makes use of a vibrant palette of reds, blues, greens and yellows. As well as being inspired by people she knows and loves, Kattah is also inspired by field trips and visits to museum collections. She has been a member of Intoart, a London-based organisation that works with adults and young people with learning disabilities, since 2007.

Me and Mum Looking at the Pots, 2016 Watercolour on paper 51 x 38.5 cm Image courtesy of the artist and Intoart Auntie Amelia, 2016 Watercolour on paper 47 x 43 cm Image courtesy of the artist and Intoart

Auntie Comfort, 2016 Watercolour on paper 47 x 43 cm Image courtesy of the artist and Intoart

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Sophie Michael

b. 1985, London. Lives and works in London.

Sophie Michael’s films explore ideas around abstraction, nostalgia and Britishness. The Watershow Extravaganza (2016) records the eponymous water-music-light attraction, which has been in operation at Watermouth Castle theme park in North Devon since the early 1980s. Installed in a child-sized theatre, the performance synchronises a 1920’s Mighty Mortier Organ with a water tray exhibited at the Festival of Britain in 1951. Filmed just before its laborious annual service, both the organ’s paper roll music and tired water jets fail to hit the top notes and positions.

Today this kind of performance of innocence seems absurd and nostalgic, though not entirely innocuous. The Watershow persists, like the out-of-date format it is captured on, struggling to exist in the contemporary world. Multiple exposures mix neon colours and shots alternate between dark and light, until the show is rewoven into the fabric of the film. Exhausted and hysterical, the film’s patriotic climax is rendered at once pathetic, spectacular and slippery.

Text courtesy of the artist and Seventeen, London.

The Watershow Extravaganza, 2016 16 mm film with optical sound 10 min 30 sec Colour, 1:1.33, 24fps Edition 1 of 5 + 1 AP Image courtesy of the artist and Seventeen, London

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Stuart Middleton

b. 1987, Crewe. Lives and works in Glasgow.

Much of Stuart Middleton’s video, installation and sculpture has a deliberately rough, improvised quality. His stop-frame animation I am just going outside, I may be some time (2016), which takes its title from the final words of Antarctic explorer Captain Lawrence Oates, begins with a block of cheese rapidly decomposing in a fridge. The cheese, formed from modelling clay, twitches and jerks from take to take. As we watch, mould creeps in and fungus sprouts until all that remains is a squirming black puddle.

Next, the film follows a small doll-like figure with unruly black hair as it makes its way first through a supermarket and then through a forest, where it curls itself into a foetal position on the leafy ground. In the film’s final scenes a pupa convulses until a red-eyed fly emerges. As unsettling as it is amusing, Middleton’s film speaks of life, death, decay and the struggle to survive in the 21st century.

I am just going outside, I may be some time, 2016 Stop motion animation with sound 6 min 22 sec Edition 1 of 5 + 2 AP Image courtesy of the artist and CARLOS / ISHIKAWA, London

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Aleksandra Mir

b. 1967, Lubin, Poland. Lives and works in London.

Aleksandra Mir creates investigative, socially engaged works that take on a multitude of forms, from site-specific pieces that require public participation, to two-dimensional collage, large-scale drawings and printed items. Mir’s project Space Tapestry – inspired by the Bayeux Tapestry and the anonymous artists who depicted Halley’s Comet in 1066 – consists of a large-scale handdrawn monochrome wall-hanging and a series of 35 drawings of the International Space Station (ISS) captured in various stages of deterioration. To create these drawings, Mir sourced images of the Space Station online and reworked them on a computer. After enlarging the images, she laboriously traced their shape by hand, making small marks with her chosen medium, the Sharpie, which she has called a ‘fast, democratic’ tool. Over the past three years Mir has formed relationships with academics and professionals in the space industry. She believes that finally, after a period of long reluctance, ‘science and art are again converging.’

ISS 0007, 2016 Fibre-tipped pen on paper 70 x 100 cm Image courtesy of the artist ISS 0004, 2016 Fibre-tipped pen on paper 70 x 100 cm Image courtesy of the artist

ISS 0014, 2016 Fibre-tipped pen on paper 70 x 100 cm Image courtesy of the artist

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Jacqueline Morreau

b. 1929, Wisconsin, USA. d. 2016, London.

Figurative painter Jacqueline Morreau had a keen sense of how history affects our present social conditions. The legacy of conflict, religious intolerance and patriarchal oppression are recurrent themes in her work. ‘I was born into the knowledge of evil in the 1930s’, she explained, ‘which no one of my generation could escape.’ Much of her work is peopled with figures from classical mythology, explored from a feminist perspective. In the drawing Fleeing Woman III (1981), from Morreau’s series The Children’s Crusades, a woman carrying three children – one beneath each arm, and another clinging to her neck – looks back over her shoulder as she flees from an unknown terror. Until the end of her life, Morreau felt strongly that ‘We have only a small space of time in which to make our marks on paper and canvas, to effect permanent changes in society before the barbarians once more close in.’

Fleeing Woman III, 1981 Charcoal on paper 76 × 56 cm Photo: Mark Morreau, Alan Stott Gift of Patrick Morreau, 2017

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Ryan Mosley

b. 1980, Chesterfield. Lives and works in Sheffield.

Ryan Mosley’s paintings are often populated by carnivalesque characters, including bearded figures in top hats, acrobats and dancers, and feature harlequin prints, rampant foliage and unruly limbs. The artist describes his approach as ‘instinctive’. Rather than making studies for his paintings, he works directly onto the canvas, and incorporates any ‘mistakes’ into the finished piece.

The portrait James (2016) – which features a young man in profile – is unusual for Mosley in that it was made using preparatory sketches and drawings. It also marks a return to ‘more conventional portraits.’ Bones of Time (2013), one of Mosley’s earlier paintings, evolved from several series of portraits which, in the artist’s words, ‘attempted to navigate around portraiture’. In this uncanny image, the shape of a sand timer is created by two silhouetted faces in profile. As Mosley explains, it is ‘a portrait of life itself, life, death and everything in between’.

James, 2016 Oil on linen on board 52 × 42 cm Gift of the artist, 2016 Bones of Time, 2013 Oil on linen 100 × 80 cm Gift of the artist, 2016

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Oscar Murillo

b. 1986, La Paila, Colombia. Lives and works in London.

To make his large-scale unstretched canvasses, Oscar Murillo often works on the floor of his studio, where ‘dust and dirt’ become part of his arsenal of mark-making materials, alongside oil paint, graphite and pastel sticks. ‘I like to cut up the canvas in different sections, work on them individually, fold them and … leave them around for months’, he explains, during which time they accrue the residue of different projects. He sees the production of his artworks as ‘a continuous process’, of which he is ‘the catalyst.’ Other types of production, labour and social activity form a large part of his practice. Since 2010, the artist – who moved to London from Colombia as a child – has been organising social events involving his extended family as part of his exhibitions. ‘I’m trying to obliterate hierarchies’, he explains.

‘What’s interesting to me is how cultures collide.’

catalyst #13, 2016 Oil, oil stick and dirt on canvas 255 × 215 cm Gift of the artist and David Zwirner Gallery, 2017

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Karl Ohiri

b. 1983, London. Lives and works in London.

In his personal and autobiographical practice, photographer Karl Ohiri often examines aspects of his family history. How to Mend a Broken Heart (2013) is a collection of photographs belonging to his mother, who migrated to the UK from Nigeria in the mid1970s at the age of 20, and settled in south-east London. Each photograph in the series has been partially defaced by his mother, who has either scratched out or scrawled over her husband’s face with terms of abuse. This series of 22 photographs is part of Ohiri’s ongoing body of work entitled ‘Sweet Mother’, an autobiographical series that spans a five-year period and is concerned with the artist’s relationship to his mother and the process of coming to terms with her death.

How to Mend a Broken Heart, 2013 21 defaced photographs, 1 wedding photograph 19.5 × 23.5 cm (mounted) Images courtesy of the artist

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Ciara Phillips

b. 1976, Ottawa, Canada. Lives and works in Glasgow.

Ciara Phillips uses printmaking as a way to instigate discussion around current social and political concerns. Her works combine the bold graphic language of printed forms of public address (such as informational posters and billboards) with more intimate visual imagery, including photographs taken by Phillips of her everyday surroundings. In the series Things I associate with you, these include photographs of a water-bottle sitting in her studio and her kitchen light-fittings. Each black and white image in the series has been printed onto canvas removed from its frame.

Recently, Phillips has been engaged in a strand of thought about language and the representation of women. She explains that ‘I have an interest in processes of making that have existed as secondary or peripheral kinds of making … outside the main act of painting and sculpture.’ In one of the prints, a woven woollen blanket has been incorporated into the otherwise twodimensional display.

Things I associate with you, 2014 Screenprint on unstretched canvas with canvas appliqué 87 × 66.5 cm Things I associate with you, 2014 Screen print on unstretched canvas 87 × 66.5 cm

Things I associate with you, 2014 Screen print on unstretched canvas with hand-woven tweed appliqué 87 × 66.5 cm

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Amalia Pica

b. 1978, Neuquén Capital, Argentina. Lives and works in Athens, Greece and London.

Amalia Pica – whose diverse practice includes sculpture, performance, drawing and installation – is concerned with the ways in which art can function as a form of communication.

Interested in whether ‘images can act as language’, she also pays attention to the potential for misunderstanding or misinterpretation. The sculptures in her ongoing series Catachresis are constructed from parts of found objects that have no name of their own, and have instead taken on names for parts of the body. In Catachresis #40 (2013) and Catachresis #77 (2016) these include the head of a screw, the arm of a chair and the teeth of a saw. The resulting sculptural amalgamations are deliberately absurd. ‘I think of absurdity as a call for complicity’, she explains. ‘If I tell a joke, you either laugh or you don’t. If you laugh, it feels like there’s a moment of complete understanding between us. Often this moment of empathy is clearer through absurdity than through rational discourse.’

Catachresis #77 (teeth of the saw, leg of the table, leg of the chair, head of the screw), 2016

Catachresis #40 (teeth of the rake, leg of the chair, leg of the table, head of the screw), 2013

Found materials 80 × 61 × 31 cm Image courtesy of the artist and König Galerie, Berlin Photo: Roman März

Found materials 147.5 × 60 × 60 cm Image courtesy of the artist and König Galerie, Berlin Photo: Roman März

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Joanna Piotrowska

b. 1985, Warsaw, Poland. Lives and works in London.

Joanna Piotrowska describes her black and white photographic series FROWST as ‘a documentation of domestic performances.’

Working closely with people she knows, Piotrowska set out to restage moments of spontaneous familial intimacy. ‘My aim was not to tell a story’, she explains, but rather to ‘evoke scattered associations of inertia, violence or being mentally overwhelmed’, accompanied by contradictory feelings of ‘intimacy, closeness, joy, protection, and tenderness.’ This contradiction is captured in the series’ title, a little-used English word that describes a sensation, place or situation that is both cosy and claustrophobic.

Piotrowska is interested in the ways in which states of mind can be translated into a physical state. The gestures and postures captured in the images are based on her subjects’ family photographs, as well as techniques used in an alternative therapeutic method known as Family Constellation Therapy.

III / FROWST, 2014 Silver gelatin hand print 90 x 70 cm Edition 1 of 3 + 2 AP Image courtesy the artist and Southard Reid, London I / FROWST, 2014 Silver gelatin hand print 41 x 51 cm Edition 3 of 7 + 3 AP Image courtesy the artist and Southard Reid, London

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XV / FROWST, 2014

Untitled, 2014

Silver gelatin hand print 41 x 51 cm Edition 6 of 7 + 2 AP Image courtesy the artist and Southard Reid, London

Silver gelatin hand print 61 x 50 cm Edition 3 of 7 + 3 AP Image courtesy the artist and Southard Reid, London

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Joanna Price

b. 1956, Wexford. d. 2014, Norfolk.

Joanna Price studied at the New York Studio School in the late 1980s. While she was there, the artist became interested in the Greek vases of the Metropolitan Museum of Art as well as in Romanesque art, both of which suggested to Price new ways of organising figures in space without resorting to conventional perspective or pictorial logic. Much of her work features groups of figures painted in monochrome against a plain background.

Often, these groups consist of men in suits engaged in acts of violence or aggression as bystanders look on. The Draughtsman’s Rule (1987) is part of a series of non-figurative works that Price made shortly after returning to London from New York. During this period, her work was strongly influenced by Irish mythology and folklore, as well as by poets including Rainer Maria Rilke and Dylan Thomas.

The Draftsman’s Rule, 1987 Oil on cotton duck 128 × 152 cm Gift of Beatrice Moyes, 2016

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Charlotte Prodger

b. 1972, Bournemouth. Lives and works in Glasgow.

Narrative fragments sourced from personal emails, anecdotes and found text provide the starting point for much of Charlotte Prodger’s work, which encompasses sculpture, moving image, sound and performance. BRIDGIT (2016), a 32 minute film that brings together a range of short clips filmed on the artist’s iPhone over a period of a year, offers a complex meditation on the relationship between place, time and identity. Prodger’s footage – much of it near-static – includes shots of her home, the view through train windows and the observation deck of a ship, and the Aberdeenshire countryside. The length of each clip – just under four minutes long – was determined by the device’s limited storage. Prodger’s diverse footage is overlaid with a spoken narration, which consists of the artist’s personal reflections on subjects including a recent medical procedure; quotes from theorists and writers on the subject of technology and identity; and information about the Neolithic deity that gives the piece its name.

Supported by Hollybush Gardens and Creative Scotland.

BRIDGIT, 2016 Single-channel HD video 32 min Edition 1 of 3 + 2 AP Installation view at Hollybush Gardens Image courtesy of the artist and Hollybush Gardens, London

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Yinka Shonibare MBE

b. 1962, London. Lives and works in London.

Working across painting, photography, film and sculpture, BritishNigerian artist Yinka Shonibare – who describes himself as a ‘postcolonial hybrid’ – explores themes of cultural identity, class and race. In his work, he often makes use of vibrantly coloured wax-print fabric bought in Brixton market, London. This is the case for his mixed-media sculpture The Crowning (2007), which features two life-sized headless mannequins reclining in a colourful tableau. The postures of these figures, and their costumes – emblazoned with the logo of well-known luxury brand Chanel – are modelled on those of a romantic couple in a painting by 18th-century painter Jean-Honoré Fragonard, The Progress of Love: The Lover Crowned (1771–72). Shonibare’s The Crowning offers an oblique but critical commentary on postcolonial identity as well as the wealth and excesses of contemporary and historic aristocratic society.

The Crowning, 2007 Wax printed cotton textile, shoes, coir matting, artificial silk flowers 160 × 280 × 210 cm Photo: Ben Mallac Acquired in honour of Sir Peter Bazalgette, 2017

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Simon Starling

b. 1967, Epsom. Lives and Works in Copenhagen, Denmark.

The transformation of materials from one state to another, as well as circular journeys both real and metaphorical, form a large part of Simon Starling’s work, which he has described as ‘the physical manifestation of a thought process.’ Project for a Rift Valley Crossing (2015–16) saw Starling construct a canoe out of magnesium extracted from 1,900 litres of seawater. The work evolved from the artist’s interest in the British engineer Frank Kirk, who in the 1980s built light-weight magnesium bike frames using the same method. The magnesium used to create Starling’s boat was extracted from the politically charged waters of the Dead Sea, which as the artist explains is also ‘the most concentrated source of magnesium in the world’. After exhibiting the boat in his solo exhibition at Nottingham Contemporary in 2016, Starling returned it to its source and used it to make the difficult crossing from Israel to Jordan.

Purchased with funds from the Thornton Bequest, generously given to the nation by the estate of Elfrida Louise Thornton in 1951. Historically the gift has supported the casting of sculpture

by British artists and in that spirit, the Arts Council Collection has supported Simon Starling to complete this work.

Project for a Rift Valley Crossing, 2015–16 Canoe cast in Dead Sea magnesium, 2 paddles, 2 canvas seats, Dead Sea water, tanks, wooden welding jig, 2 silver gelatin prints Installed dimensions variable Canoe 53 x 474 x 85 cm Unique artwork (Set of two prints 1 of 10 + 1 AP) Images courtesy of the artist and The Modern Institute/Toby Webster Ltd, Glasgow Acquired with the support of the Thornton Bequest Photo: Simon Starling

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Mark Aerial Waller

b. 1969, High Wycombe. Lives and works in London.

Mark Aerial Waller’s Phantom Avantgarde (2010) is a movingimage work housed within its own purpose-built display case. As Waller explains, ‘the film and its method of display have been conceived together’, each one a ‘functional and symbolic counterpart’ to the other.

Inside the case, a full-length mirror reflects the projected film onto a rear-projection screen, which means the image can be viewed from three separate perspectives: from both sides of the screen, as well as from the mirror opposite. The film itself consists of life-size cut outs of figures from existentialist cinema and the Parisian intellectual scene of the mid-1960s. The narration and subtitled text is provided by Louis-Ferdinand Celine’s novel, Journey to the End of the Night (1932). To create the film, Waller – who used to work as a projectionist at the London filmmaker’s co-op – used a hand-held camera and the same film stock as the original movies.

Phantom Avantgarde, 2010 Black and white 16 mm film transferred to digital video Display case, wood structure with mirror foil and projection screen with video collage 8 min 50 sec Edition 2 of 2 + 1 AP Image courtesy of the artist and RODEO, London

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Andrea Luka Zimmerman

b. 1969, Munich, Germany. Lives and works in London.

Andrea Luka Zimmerman makes films that ‘explore the relationship between public and private memory.’ Estate, a Reverie (2015) was filmed on the Haggerston estate in east London, the artist’s home for 17 years. Filming began in 2007 – when the estate was earmarked for demolition – and ended seven years later. Zimmerman, who describes her approach to filmmaking as collaborative and performative, explains that ‘as someone who has spent the vast majority of their life living on large public housing estates … it was incredibly important to me that the film I was making was not about the community it depicts, but made from within it.’ Seeking to provide the residents of the estate with ‘a voice and visual presence to counter the many myths and clichés of their mainstream representation’, the film combines role play with observational documentary, and weaves together intimate portraits of the residents with architectural studies and dramatic re-enactments.

Produced by Fugitive Images, with support from The Community Growth Fund, Arts Council London and PRS Foundation for New Music.

Estate, a Reverie, 2015 Single-channel HD video 82 min Edition 1 of 3 + 1 AP Image courtesy of the artist

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Members of the Acquisitions Committee 2016–17 Maria Balshaw, Director of the Whitworth, University of Manchester and Manchester City Galleries (Chair) 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 2016–17 Helen Legg, Director, Spike Island Helen Pheby, Senior Curator, Yorkshire Sculpture Park Morgan Quaintance, writer, musician, broadcaster and curator Bedwyr Williams, artist 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