FBA Futures 2019

FBA

Futures

2019

FBA Futures 2019

8 to 19 January Mall Galleries, The Mall, London SW1

FBA Futures is proudly sponsored by

Prizes sponsored by

Catalogue supported by

Transport supported by

FBA

Futures

The seventh edition of FBA Futures is built upon solid foundations. In recent years Mall Galleries’ annual graduate exhibition of figurative art has trebled in size and increased its reach by selecting artists graduating from schools across the nation.

This wide coverage allows for a bird’s-eye view of emerging figurative art, indicating where those leaving art education each year will take the genre. Such a survey allows us to understand today’s preoccupations of tomorrow’s artists, thus shining a spotlight on the common themes and ideas held by the next generation of artists.

Among the themes within this exhibition there are clear interests in the binary opposites of nature and the built environment, whether that be through the unsettling experiences of woodlands or the social design behind British new towns, the ‘fetishism for ... a get-fit lifestyle’ or non-spaces recorded by a tourist on an urban walk.

There is also a clear discussion of identities: personal and digital, in respect of gender, race, age, sexuality or geography, as part of a wider cultural heritage or as stated by identification documents. The diversity of artists in this exhibition enrich it with plural perspectives and stories to tell.

Perhaps unsurprisingly for emerging artists in the Information Age, the most significant theme traversing the exhibition is the digital realm. References to the digital, from memes to the aesthetic of digital drawing, are apparent in many of the artists’ work, while others state a ‘resistance’ to the digital epoque or an inundation of visual information.

The artists in this exhibition, now in their first years of professional life, will take their work out into the wider world and we look forward, as we have done in previous years, to seeing our exhibitors appear in museum and gallery shows, residencies and public art commissions around the UK. We are ever grateful to our exhibition sponsor Minerva, who have generously supported FBA Futures for the sixth year, allowing us to continue supporting emerging artists at this critical stage of their careers.

It is also with great excitement that we announce our new collaboration with Foundation Derbyshire who, through the Jonathan Vickers Fine Art Award, will be supporting one FBA Futures alumnus with a nine month residency and solo shows in Derby and London.

Anna Bromwich

A word from our sponsor

The Jonathan Vickers Fine Art Award

We are delighted to be sponsoring FBA Futures for the sixth time, having done so each year since we started trading. The ongoing growth of the exhibition is exciting, as the selectors search the length and breadth of the UK to ensure the quality and diversity of the artworks. We support Mall Galleries wholeheartedly in an ambition for FBA Futures to bring forward talented artists of enormous potential, and for it to be a leading national forum in showcasing new graduate art.

In January 2019, Mall Galleries and Foundation Derbyshire will be inviting FBA Futures finalists and alumni to be considered for the biennial Jonathan Vickers Fine Art Award residency, an exciting opportunity for a rising artist to produce a lasting legacy of contemporary work inspired by Derbyshire’s landscape, heritage and people.

Our engagement with the exhibition provides an excellent opportunity for us to make real our commitment to investing a proportion of our profits in the sectors that we serve as a business. It also gives us the chance on an annual basis to stand back and take stock of the progress of our own organisation, where we take seriously the same focus on quality and diversity that the selectors employ in curating the exhibition.

Ben Tucker and Kerry Shepherd Minerva

The successful artist will receive a bursary of £18,000, the use of a studio in Derby, a contribution to the cost of materials, the opportunity to work on a fully funded community outreach project and a Teaching Fellowship at (and support and mentoring from) the University of Derby’s College of Arts.

During the nine month residency the artist will focus on producing new work for public exhibition, including solo exhibitions at both Derby Museum and Art Gallery and Mall Galleries, London.

Rachael Grime Foundation Derbyshire

Talks & Events Be Smart About Art Workshop Digital Marketing with Susan J Mumford Thursday 10 January 2pm to 4pm £18, £14 Concession Panel Discussion Collectives and Federations: Why Do Artists Collaborate?

Saturday 12 January 2pm to 3:30pm £7, £5 Concession Meet and Collaborate with In the Studio Artists Their Own Kind of Art Education Sunday 13 January 11:30am to 2pm Suggested Donation: £3 Exhibition Tour Art Walk Sunday 13 January 2:30pm to 3:30pm A curator’s tour followed by a reflective walk and discussion moderated by Lily Hudson Suggested Donation: £3 Be Smart About Art Event What Makes You Special?

Tuesday 15 January 1:30pm to 3pm Art consultant Barbara Stanley in conversation with Susan J Mumford £18, £14 Concession

Exhibition Tour FBA Futures with Pete the Street Thursday 17 January 12 noon to 1pm A short tour of the exhibition by plein air painter, Pete ‘the Street’ Brown PNEAC RP PS ROI Hon RBA. £7, £5 Concession Panel Discussion Do Art Schools Make Art Movements?

Thursday 17 January 3pm to 4:30pm £7, £5 Concession Panel Discussion Female Futures Friday 18 January 2pm to 3:30pm £7, £5 Concession Taster Session NEAC Drawing School The Figure in Focus: Life Drawing with Mick Kirkbride NEAC Saturday 19 January 10am to 12 noon Open to current students and recent graduates of fine art £5 Panel Discussion Contemporary Painting: How Has Digital Culture Changed The Way We See? Saturday 19 January 2pm to 3:30pm £7, £5 Concession

Book online at www.mallgalleries.org.uk

Darja Abdirova

1986 Tashkent, Uzbekistan

Transference Oil & mixed media 136 x 168 cm

Gray’s School of Art BA (Hons) Painting

I travel Europe and collect objects as relics from the past and visions of the future.

In the tradition of the artists of the Modern period, I am seeking a utopic vision for the 21st century. I paint fairy tales, stories, graphic art on MDF and canvas. Pop culture influences play as much a part in my work as does high brow art.

Through popular topics, spiritual influences, classical myths, religious credos and everyday myths I find my own visual language. Being from Central Asia, but exposed to European ideals, I find my own way of uniting the orient and occident.

Annie-Marie Akussah

1995 Accra, Ghana

“Kwantunyi” (Traveller) Oil on canvas, jute sack and bag 171 x 171 cm

Wimbledon College of Arts Fine Art

‘’Kwantunyi’’ is part of an ongoing series which explores inter-African migration. It uses three West African nations as an entry point to discuss important migratory movements, post-independence.

The materiality of the work plays a vital role in discussing identity, the passing of time and the notion of belonging. By integrating portraiture with transfers, prints and assemblage, my paintings take on different characters, which mirror the life of an expatriate; the expatriate adapts, loses and learns different cultures within the ‘new’ space that is being occupied.

Larry Amponsah

1989 Accra, Ghana

Hunger, Curiosity & Urgency Mixed media 170 x 340 cm

Royal College of Art MA Painting

My practice often uses archival images and materials sampled from various cultures to attempt to solve the unresolved questions of representation in the history of art by employing collage as a point of departure; to create compositions of entities in spaces and spaces in entities and to tell fictional stories that deal with global issues.

For this piece I tried to extend the materiality of archival images and objects - by preoccupying myself in painting, employing the act of tearing as a resistance against the authority of the digital epoch and collaging as an act to find some kind of solution for transformation. Most importantly, the work examines what it means to live within this globalised world influenced by so much (technology, education, politics, etc.) and yet restricting in all aspects of our lives. Through the act of negotiation, over 300 images were sampled from private homes, offices, the internet, institutional archives, newspapers and so on.

Rodrigo Arteaga

1988 Santiago, Chile

Practical Zoology: cat Paper pulp from a book on Zoology 4 x 33 x 17 cm

Slade School of Fine Art MFA Sculpture

I examine notions and ideas around nature and culture, considering what sort of division can exist between them. I have used material culture that comes from science and its varied systematic methods in the form of books, maps, diagrams, furniture and tools.

There is some inherent contradiction in this effort to bring together order and disorder, the useful and the useless, unearthing the coded enigmas of our relationship to the environment. I have responded to scientific culture in an attempt to embrace its limits, maybe turn it back onto itself, finding a crack, subjectivising something meant to be objective.

Keron Beattie

1952 Newcastle on Tyne, UK

KB 18/04 - 8 Lead and glass 6 x 4 x 2 cm

Norwich University of the Arts MA Fine Art

I work with ideas of fragmentation, remaking and wholeness. My starting point is always exploring and understanding the materials I have chosen, or found. I prefer to use found and recycled objects and work these by hand using traditional tools and techniques. The slower process of hand working encourages a way of seeing and then re-seeing the materials and allowing new forms to emerge.

For these pieces I worked with a combination of glass and lead to explore the notion of autonomous stained glass, i.e. that which exists outside the structure of the building. The idea of lead and glass working together and giving each other structure and form intrigued me and encouraged me to see how far I could push their potential as complementary materials, with a long history, whilst also looking at the passing of time recorded in the objects themselves, and through my interventions.

Zoe Beaudry

1991 Lansing, Michigan, USA

Simulation Oil on canvas (diptych) 190 x 79 cm (each)

Glasgow School of Art MFA

This diptych is a projection into an imagined future. Using myself as the model, this work is questioning the subject-hood of both the pregnant mother and her unborn child, the mother’s identity appears to evolve as the foetus grows.

Using the language of traditional painting and taking inspiration from bodily transformation, spiritual experience, and the increasingly ubiquitous use of online avatars, Simulation interrogates what human beings are made of in 2018, as technology becomes an increasingly essential extension of our biological existence and the “self” becomes an even more fluid concept.

Jack Candy-Kemp

1984 Kingston upon Thames, UK

Rooftop Gouache on board 28 x 35.5 cm

Wimbledon College of Arts MA Painting

Both paintings exhibited are from my recent trip to Glasgow where I walked the city and its perimeter for a day.

The works are a response to the contemporary tourist experience and the places we encounter in between destinations. The Waiting Room addresses the anticipation of departure and return, whilst Rooftop speaks of the liminal spaces we find that cause us to reflect.

Also part of the exhibition is my written piece Beyond the Liminal, a reflective narrative on the trip which takes you on an emotive walk through Glasgow.

Gabriel Chaim

1994 Piracicaba, Brazil

Untitled (Series of 16) Mixed media 15 x 10 cm (each)

Wimbledon College of Arts MA Painting

I paint tradition.

Looking back on the masters of old, into what could just be a spawn of divine inspiration materialized as the most gracious visual narratives lies the true Scienza (Science) that, aligned to Fantasia (Fantasy as the human creative potential) and inextricable operazione del mano (work of the hand), the painter no longer produces a mere object but the very allegory of their Vitruvian nature.

Corinna D’Schoto

1987 Wisconsin, USA

STEVIE (Living Room triptych) Mixed media on wood 35 x 40 cm

Glasgow School of Art MFA

The Living Room triptych, from the series ‘STEVIE’, are paintings on plywood with layers of interchangeable acetate sheets. The sheets create a space that becomes a non-place; playing with movement and time within a single frame, acting as barriers and windows into a space and the memory of space. Using materials that are utilitarian and disposable, the STEVIE rooms exist in a place of non-commitment, impermanence, and mutability.

Ben Edmunds

1994 Norwich, UK

Idle Time in Last Resort Acrylic & silkscreen on canvas 180 x 140 cm

Royal College of Art MA Painting

Faker and Idle Time in Last Resort are a combination of hardcore abstract painting with extreme sports. They explore the seductive mechanisms of desire at work in colour field painting, in the context of a fetishism for sportswear, equipment and a get-fit lifestyle. They are my first paintings with shaped canvases, something that has since developed to be a key part of my work.

These surfaces are dyed and bleached several times, creating deep recessive spaces that invite contemplation. This depth is interrupted by the frontal, flat camouflage graphic. Alongside the stock image mountain-scape backdrop, this sets up a conversation about our desires for adventure, experience and meaning in the context of a heavily appropriated and mediated natural world.

Angus Fernie

1996 Glasgow, UK

Vino, Vino, Vino, Vase Oil on canvas 114 x 114 cm

Glasgow School of Art Painting & Printmaking

The work is strongly grounded in two firm beliefs; the notion that representational painting is not ‘dead’ as many claim and the idea that everything is, to some degree, very silly.

Playing with the idea of the representational, the works verge on the abstract using motifs and symbols such as vases, wine bottles and plants. The motifs exist almost as figures in their own right giving these somewhat trivial objects anthropomorphic qualities. Making reference to the history of serious figurative painting, my work aims to invert this, making work for the ‘meme’ generation.

Emma Fineman

1991 Berkeley, California, USA

I Felt a Presence in the Room, I Feel the the Air was Thick Oil and charcoal on canvas 213 x 178 cm

Royal College of Art MA Painting

In my practice, I explore methods to fracture and reconfigure
pictorial space.

This I deploy as a means to describe and digest the dense compression and spacialisation of time in contemporary culture. In our moment, we are inundated with visual information that renders our ability to understand and process experience, as well as our sense of time and perspective, haphazard if not indeed skewed. My paintings begin here and assert the idea of looking at and through such a fractured pictorial space. I then begin to question how figural information might exist within this frame.

Alexander Fox-Robinson

1996 Fishguard, UK

Audience 3 Acrylic on nylon & board 122 x 183 cm

Carmarthen School of Art BA (Hons) Fine Art: Painting, Drawing & Printmaking

This work is part of a series of studies of post-modern ideas in relation to premodern ones. The representation of this is a crowd with references from The Moomins and Auschwitz to Faust and Mephistopheles.

This style of referencing is inherent to communication through art, the artist uses well known symbols to create a narrative that the viewer can connect with, in modern digital communities these are called memes and are regarded as a universal inside joke. The work uses memes themselves as a reference to life in the digital world and uncertainty of subjectivity and ultimately post-modernism.

Gabriela Giroletti

1982 Porto Alegre, Brazil

Like Opium Oil on cotton 220 x 180 cm

Slade School of Fine Art MFA Painting

I paint loosely observed details of the world around me. These paintings are deliberately ambiguous, borderline figurations, encouraging the viewer to formulate unusual associations with our concrete surroundings. I often use the natural world and simple moments as departure points, reinforcing the importance of everyday experience. I transform these images in the process of painting, which evolve through layering and reworking the surface, accepting improvisation as a tool for visual invention. The work jolts between its crude materiality and its metaphysical aspect, a push and pull game that has been repeatedly present in discussions around painting.

Keziah Greenwood

1995 Croydon, UK

No asking these two Oil on canvas 120 x 220 cm

University of Brighton Fine Art Painting

I loosely based the pose of the two figures on Manet’s painting Olympia, intrigued by the power projected by the figures’ gaze and body language. Playing with the idea of a woman’s space, utilizing stereotypes of female interaction ‘zones’ and satirizing it by physically placing the reclining figure within a bath. I used the colour cadmium red to stimulate a somewhat sinister tone and specific heightened colours to create celluloid dreams in a similar vein to artist film directors like Wim Wenders and David Lynch.

The two models are both artists who have inspired my practice, so this painting is a dedication to their humour, talent and influence.

Lucy Gregory

1994 London, UK

Images Have Legs Steel, paint, digital photographic prints on aluminium 220 x 200 x 330 cm

Royal College of Art MA Sculpture

Images Have Legs lies in waiting, ready to be brought to life by a passing gallery goer. The crank handle is turned, and photographic cutouts spin in a mesmeric spiral - momentum gathered beyond the initial activation feeds the sculpture with a constant whirling energy until finally dissipating.

It is as if entering into an animation – the flat limbs reminiscent of a Monty Python graphic - a surreal collage projected into actuality, where the irrational laws that govern the cartoon world dominate. The automaton references a history of early image making and motion-capture techniques such as the Eadweard Muybridge running horse, or pre-film animation devices such as a Victorian zoetrope.

India Johnson

1995 Ashford, UK

The Orange Jug Oil on canvas 55 x 55 cm

Newcastle University Fine Art

My paintings are a visual documentation of everyday, neglected objects. I draw inspiration from subjects that are of value to me, forming life sized arrangements that are presented to the viewer. My paintings always start with drawing from life, repeating different objects that are often overlooked into simplified forms. By rendering these observations into a visual language of shape, colour and form, my work heightens the remarkable in our everyday surroundings.

Clarissa Lim

1993 Wellington, New Zealand

Rafflesia Royal College of Art Water jet cut and laser engraved marble MA Painting 20 x 16.5 cm

I work across painting, objects and installation addressing personal cross cultural references to investigate how nature and culture collide or cross paths.

Two particular species of flower, Rafflesia and Pohutakawa, are memorialised in found marble to act as symbols of my two cultural backgrounds; one of my Chinese Malaysian heritage and the other of my birth place, New Zealand.

With an interest in paleobotany, the works attempt to create a contemporary representation of fossilised plants.

Andrew Loggie

1995 Epsom, UK

Fade Oil on panel 25 x 50 cm

City and Guilds of London Art School Fine Art: Painting

Here, the Isle of the Dead is encased within a computer module; rendered in a monochromatic grisaille palette. The materiality, brushwork and physicality of Böcklin’s original is lost. The computer module seen within the painting serves as a type of sensory ‘graveyard’ for the paintings of the past; referencing how our primary contact with written or pictorial content is through the barrier of a screen.

We are engaging with a transcribed copy of the original.

Jemisha Maadhavji

1996 Leicester, UK

GUCCYOTIC Oil on canvas 125 x 80 cm

De Montfort University BA (Hons) Fine Art

I am a figurative painter exploring individuals from different cultural backgrounds, personalities and genders through symbolism and narrative. My paintings demonstrate a contrast between realism and expressionism, from thick textured paint to smooth delicate painting, allowing the viewers to feel the presence of the sitter. We all think of ourselves as icons in some shape or form, especially in the time of smart phones and social media. We live in the era of instant image. We feel like we want to look like a certain celebrity, by taking selfies and constantly posting them on social media. But when do we appreciate our own selves, who we are as individuals? My work develops a sense of time in the image, a unique contiguity of time, place and personality that is lost in instant media.

Amy McMillan

1995 Bedfordshire, UK

The Shakers Glazed terracotta 25 x 10 x 10 cm (each)

Falmouth University Fine Art

My figurative practice explores liminality, performativity and the discomfort around sexuality during adolescence. Slouching with silky limbs, captured in staccato poses, The Shakers are a collection of colourful ceramic players. Each character is disguised in masquerade and costume, their gender ambiguous, shown to be free, law-less and without boundaries. Be-WILD-ered. They quite literally shake, both as an expression of trauma and as a way to find relief. With reference to animal hybrids and archetypal imagery they mirror the transformational nature of fired ceramic, a medium used to suggest narratives of metamorphoses and restoration.

Yasmin Moore-Milne

1996 Aberdeen, UK

Descending White Space Oil on canvas 125 x 169 cm

Gray’s School of Art Painting

I discovered this fascinating perspective from a window in Lisbon. I was immediately illuminated by such a crisp, elegant image. Each white wall and subtle shift in shade was incredibly satisfying. The untouched, white planes descending into a flat tiled surface played around with time and space revealing the wonders of visionary experiences. I used gouache initially to capture the precise, one touch mark making aesthetic. I then created a larger scale oil painting which still captured the delicate mark making aesthetics but also my initial overwhelming experience of becoming immersed in the space.

Joseph Nichol

1996 London, UK

Sugar sweet chase Oil on linen 200 x 170 cm

Central Saint Martins BA (Hons) Fine Art

In creating large-scale oil paintings that unveil romantic dreamscapes of my fantasy of Jamaica, I explore my yearning for somewhere that I have never visited yet feel connected to and the poetics of my mixed-race identity.

Littering canvases with a recurring set of images; a visual language of sugarsweet and menacing themes that collide to unsettle this utopia allows me to confront concepts of geographical identity, authenticity, race and belonging.

Jamaican folklore and tales my father has shared with me of the island directs much of the narrative in my artworks.

Tomi Olopade

1995 London, UK

Amy’s Bedroom Oil on canvas 130 x 87 cm

Leeds Arts University Fine Art

Good Hair is an oil painting series, focusing on the cultural importance of hair styling and hair care amongst black people. The painting series is a celebration and exploration of both individualities as well as commonness. A stepping stone to a future project focusing on individuality.

The first selection of paintings adopts a window viewing aesthetic, peering into intimate moments of hair care, and creating images of familiar scenes. The intricate borders, designed as a way of elevating the sitter, take their influence from elegant rug designs and William Morris prints.

David Paton

1994 Portobello, UK

Gotta Catch Em’ All Oil on board 90 x 122 cm

Gray’s School of Art Painting

Both my paintings featured in this exhibition discuss the topic of British New Towns. Gotta Catch Em’ All is an image constructed from film stills I pulled from a video promoting Livingston, the town I was brought up in. This painting communicates a darker perspective of control hinting at our susceptibility as children.

The Big Plan is based upon the origins of new towns in the UK displaying the committee involved in the creation of the first new towns around London and the larger than life map emphasising the lack of control.

Oliver Pearce

1996 Salisbury, UK

Minerva in Thought Oil on canvas 160 x 150 cm

Camberwell College of Arts Painting

Roman goddess of wisdom, strategies and the arts, sits in patience, almost near boredom, weighing up her strategic options, with both comedic and dramatic resolutions.

The painting developed through a multitude of different compositional layers, some of which form the final image. This painting is an ode to Minerva and the various war strategies a painter shall use to achieve a final image, and how the artist attacks the canvas, looking to find a victory. Minerva oversees from overhead guiding the artist’s hand.

Qian Qian

1990 Ganzhou, China

Nap Time (7 to 17 month-old) #21 Watercolour on paper 29.7 x 42 cm

Goldsmiths MFA Fine Art

Accomplished during my daughter’s naptime, the watercolour series Nap Time (7 to 17 month-old) is a playful search into the subconscious state of the motherdaughter relationship. The Lacanian theory of the real, imaginary and symbolic being one of the biggest references for my work, the interplay of the imaginary (the sensible/visionary) and the symbolic (language and signs) is constantly discussed in my paintings, this series especially.

Carmel Reid

1994 Leeds, UK

Penglais Wood III Acrylic on board 44 x 60 cm

The School of Art, Aberystwyth University MA Fine Art

During the winter months, I had an increasing sense of uneasiness when walking alone in the woods. I was always alert to the potential dangers and subconsciously these thoughts edged into my work. However, these feelings were not as prevalent during the summer when the woodland was brighter, greener and warmer.

Whether it be winter or summer, the trees and branches formed barriers into the woodland when painting, creating various pathways. These offer a variety of routes for the audience who might be tempted to enter the woodland and perhaps create their own scenarios and stories, as I do myself.

Francisco Rodriguez

1989 Santiago, Chile

The Twins Oil on canvas 220 x 190 cm

Slade School of Fine Art MFA Painting

My practice focuses mainly on painting and drawing on canvas and paper.

The characters and scenes that I paint explore topics of loneliness, alienation, and violence. These characters, despite coming from personal sensations and experiences can become universal by materialising them through painting. Thus, painting as a medium enables me to explore topics which although embedded in my experience, making them highly personal, through the language of painting can become universal.

Ania Sabet

1972 Portsmouth, UK

Head 1 Bronze (edition of 9) 25 x 20 x 23 cm

Heatherley School of Fine Art Sculpture Diploma

I made these heads with waste clay during a modeling workshop with my back to the model using the inherent vibrancy of the material to guide me. I tried not to be contrived in the way I added these pieces together. I used the pieces of clay like a found object. I was trying to make a transient image that provoked the viewer to see both human identity and abstract shapes.

Mohammed Sami

1984 Baghdad, Iraq

Unedited still-life Acrylic on linen 76.5 x 112.5 cm

Goldsmiths MFA

These paintings trace the anecdotes of personal memory. I believe that the medium of painting has the capacity to record lived processes, searching inaccessible memories which one cannot rid oneself of.

My painted subject matter ranges from the symbolic to the everyday and historical moments. While prominently autobiographical, the works are not intended to be viewed as scenes of evidence, but to elicit confession or testimony which allows the spectators to read the artworks symptomatically to arrive at their own conclusions.

Juan Carlos Sanchez Sabogal

1990 Lima, Peru

Precipitated Drawing #0 Charcoal on chalk ground panel 40 x 28 cm

Wimbledon College of Arts MA Drawing

Exploring the boundaries of portraiture is the core of my practice. After visiting HM Pentonville Prison, I realized that I wanted to dignify the inmates for allowing me to draw them. As a draughtsman, I decided to go to a prison and discover/study emptiness.

My increasing interest in the marked and unmarked space has heightened the need for making new solutions for the self-contained object and the ground.

Therefore, the marked and unmarked space is the unity of the division between mind and hand, and the subject is a reflection on memory.

Tina Scopa

1970 Irvine, UK

Wild Vegetation Graphite & pigment on paper 90 x 60 cm

Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design: University of Dundee BA (Hons) Fine Art

I have developed experimental printing techniques where the plants ‘draw’ themselves. I call these ‘The Pigment Print’, ‘The Graphite Print’, and ‘The Ink Print’. I have also taken this into ceramics, experimental photography, and some simple sculptures.

This print utilises my Graphite Print technique for several wild plants including St. John’s wort, nettle, and yarrow that had sprung up spontaneously in my urban environment in Dundee.

Interested in the entire forms of the plants including their roots, I came across an old Scottish word, Makdome that was used to describe ‘form’ but also suggested an underlying elegance within that. It pointed to the harmony that underpins all living forms.

Ella Squirrell

1995 Exeter, UK

Deck Chair Oil on linen 40 x 50 cm

Falmouth University Fine Art

My practice is an exploration of modern identity, gender performativity, and observations of daily life in public and private environments.

I work from photographs, personal associations, memory and writing, manipulating subject matter and placing it in new contexts. Play and experimentation are at the heart of my process, investigating how imagery and meaning evolves through the act of painting.

These paintings are the last two in a series concerned with states of performative identity, isolation and vulnerability.

Elinor Stanley

1992 London, UK

2nd January Oil on canvas mounted on board 40 x 49 cm

Open School East

This painting is from a series of car interiors set at night. I intended the space in the paintings to be palpable and familiar, and the landscape that the car is moving through to be unknown. The interior of the car is amplified, creating a sense of encapsulation. The presence of the other body, the driver is also tangible, but equally unspecific.

Angharad Taris

1964 Ceredigion, UK

Head Land: Twilight Oil on board 40 x 51 cm

The School of Art, Aberystwyth University MA Fine Art Painting

My work is a response to the place in which I live: the west coast of Wales in and around New Quay, Ceredigion.

Born and raised on a farm, I developed an intimate relationship with my environment and a deep connection to the spirit of the place. I am positioned on the edge of landscape, where land merges with sea and sky.

My paintings do not set out to be precise representations: they are internal and external expressions of experience elicited by the painting process.

Joshua von Uexkull

1995 London, UK

Girl with iPhone Enamel on MDF 176 x 50 x 47 cm

Central Saint Martins BA Fine Art

I work with the language of abstract art and digital technology in my observational paintings of people and places. Acknowledging and embracing my own subjective viewpoint, I aim to challenge the supposed objectivity of the photography. I’m fascinated by how the eye sees the world and the elusiveness of appearances. I’m seeking to represent this visual experience more vividly.

I used a CNC machine to cut out the forms for the MDF figures. The shapes produced, based on observational iPad drawings, were then painted and assembled into life-sized figures. The figures were an attempt to break free from the rectangular frame of the canvas, physically entering and disrupting the viewer’s space.

In this encounter, the simplicity of the life-sized figures forces us to acknowledge the nature of our own interactions with people in space, and our tendency to only notice the essential details of our surroundings.

Jesse Wade

1979 Llanidloes, UK

Things and stuff Oil on board 61 x 76.5 cm

Royal College of Art Painting

Things and stuff came about during an experiment that attempted to make my mind work like certain Artificial Intelligence image processing algorithms. In it are four figures, which I had experienced visually from very varied sources but which all made it to my memory bank.

There is a dog which died in Herculaneum, a dog which I filmed on the Colombian/ Panamanian frontier, an anthropomorphised pixel man which appeared in some footage I shot in Istanbul and the legs of an anonymous pedestrian from stock CCTV footage.

The title I gleaned from the lyrics of a Tina Turner song.

Nik Watterson

1996 Stockport, UK

A Generous Host Mixed media 120 x 150 x 75 cm

Leeds Arts University Fine Art

A Generous Host is an exploration of the role of the ‘Host’ - a position that comes with both expectations and anxieties.

The work takes this scene beyond functionality: presenting cups that cannot hold liquid, a candlestick that melts upon use, and cutlery too unwieldy to use. The form of these objects bring to mind the expectations of hosting to the viewer; however, their unconventional materials hint at the anxieties also involved with such a task.

Amy Whittle

1995 Dungannon, UK

Equilibrium Oil 130 x 110 cm

Belfast School of Art, Ulster University Fine Art Painting

A straight wide motorway. The lanes are set, driven over; a mark on the land.

Parallel to this lies our yard. Situated on the divide between the landscape of rolling hills and the systematic structure of the neighbouring towns and villages.

A contrast both visual and physical, a push and pull between what is natural and what is manmade; it is here where I was reared, the land that I know. A two-time, three-time or four-time beat- the rhythmic motion of horses over the landscape they inhabit. I have both experienced and witnessed its changes. An ever-developing canvas.

My paintings exist as a response to this, acting as an attempt to find a balance between myself and the motif, the environment and the objects and beings within that environment.

Maddalena Zadra

1996 Cles (TN), Italy

Tonight balls and pesto pasta Acrylic and ink on sewed canvas 180 x 120 cm

University of Brighton BA Fine Art Painting

My works are a fusion of a specific engagement with formal concerns, that integrate different ways of mark making and its relationship to surface, including collage, drawing and print. The use of images gives the works a personal narrative that works on a number of levels.

The critical but ironic side of each subject comes from the choice and juxtaposition of the chosen images and continues with the layering of colours and materials.

They are both painterly, highly tactile and are identified most clearly in their dialectical conversation with the medium’s traditions and its classical structure.

The Artists Darja Abdirova Gray’s School of Art Annie-Marie Akussah Wimbledon College of Arts Larry Amponsah Royal College of Art Rodrigo Arteaga Slade School of Fine Art Keron Beattie Norwich University of the Arts Zoe Beaudry Glasgow School of Art Jack Candy-Kemp Wimbledon College of Arts Gabriel Chaim Wimbledon College of Arts Corinna D’Schoto Glasgow School of Art Ben Edmunds Royal College of Art Angus Fernie Glasgow School of Art Emma Fineman Royal College of Art Alexander Fox-Robinson Carmarthen School of Art Gabriela Giroletti Slade School of Fine Art Keziah Greenwood University of Brighton Lucy Gregory Royal College of Art India Johnson Newcastle University Clarissa Lim Royal College of Art Andrew Loggie City and Guilds of London Art School Jemisha Maadhavji De Montfort University Amy McMillan Falmouth University

Yasmin Moore-Milne Gray’s School of Art Joseph Nichol Central Saint Martins Tomi Olopade Leeds Arts University David Paton Gray’s School of Art Oliver Pearce Camberwell College of Arts Qian Qian Goldsmiths Carmel Reid The School of Art, Aberystwyth University Francisco Rodriguez Slade School of Fine Art Ania Sabet Heatherley School of Fine Art Mohammed Sami Goldsmiths Juan Carlos Sanchez Sabogal Wimbledon College of Arts Tina Scopa Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design Ella Squirrell Falmouth University Elinor Stanley Open School East Angharad Taris The School of Art, Aberystwyth University Joshua von Uexkull Central Saint Martins Jesse Wade Royal College of Art Nik Watterson Leeds Arts University Amy Whittle Belfast School of Art, Ulster University Maddalena Zadra University of Brighton

Acknowledgements Chair: Nicholas Usherwood Curatorial Team: Anna Bromwich, Elli Koumousi, Lewis McNaught, Alistair Redgrift, Liberty Rowley Public Programme: Lily Hudson Head Technician: Conor Murphy We are grateful to our collaborators who visited final shows up and down the country: Tim Benson PROI NEAC, James Bland NEAC, Peter Graham ROI, Andrew James RP NEAC, Poppy Jones, Gareth Kemp, Barry McGlashan, Lucy Parham, Melissa Scott-Miller NEAC RBA RP, Colin Watson, Toby Wiggins RP, Lisa Wright

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Looking for Georgia Painting Georgia O’Keeffe Country 25 February to 2 March 2019 Mall Galleries, The Mall, London SW1

Lydia Bauman Chimney Rock in Ghost Ranch, New Mexico, heart of Georgia O’Keeffe country. Mixed media

Lydia Bauman - Paintings In September 2017 artist and art historian Lydia Bauman travelled to New Mexico in the footsteps of the legendary American artist Georgia O’Keeffe to find the iconic landscape motifs O’Keeffe made her own. In this series she uses her innovative mixed media technique to cast a new light onto “Georgia O’Keeffe country”. www.lydiabauman.com

Karl E Dudman - Photographs Karl Dudman, an anthropologist, writer and photographer (as well as Lydia’s son) accompanied the artist to New Mexico and contributes to the exhibition with a selection of his evocative photographs of Georgia O’Keeffe country. www.karldudman.com

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