Quad to showcase 25 emerging artists held back by Covid
A NEW exhibition at Derby’s Quad, called Future Focus, will showcase the work of 25 emerging artists selected from an international open call next month.
Part of the Format International Photography Festival, and Quad’s artist support and mentoring schemes, The Future Focus open call was aimed at graduates from Ukbased BA Degree courses who graduated in 2020 and 2021 – during the pandemic – but were unable to exhibit their final work or who were limited in chances to show their work.
Submissions to the open call featured a range of artistic disciplines, including photography, painting, illustration, graphic design, animation, performance, installation, sculpture, and moving image.
Seven of the Future Focus artists will have their work in Quad’s gallery while work by the other 18 shortlisted artists
be displayed in a slideshow on an interactive screen situated at the gallery entrance. The seven artists cover a range of media and themes.
Armaghan Fatemi’s installation Invisible Hands - far from the glamorised portrayals of professional weavers circulated by the media - immerses viewers in an environment that highlights the reality for many women: poor working conditions and financial instability.
Ash/ella’s hyperfiction, Mechanical Dissatisfaction, set in June 2020, is a collaboration between the artists and the viewer as you manoeuvre through the cyclical system of a digital life during a global pandemic.
Benjamin Hall’s work Analepses uses the medium of videogaming to explore ancestry, provincial local archives, community memory and regional oral histories.
Sarah-jane Field’s Why is There an Astronaut in a Field of Flowers is an invitation to peer into the deconstructed relationship between an artist and her AI friend, and to bear witness to their fears, hopes, opinions, disappointments and occasional flirtations.
Takudzwa Chandiwana uses various media to create ‘print-paintings’ in her work Place Moments that reflect the constant deconstruction and reconstruction of material and form in her practice. It is within these processes that meaning can be discovered, as the artist explores gender and cultural identity.
You Hah Kim’s Home-master series portrays the K-pop fandom culture through a metaphoric female body, focusing on the contradictory relationship between recognition desire and anonymity as well as voyeurism and exhibitionism.
Yuhong Wang exists simultaneously within her work Luxurious experience in the art school and its underlying narrative, both a search for, and a reaction to, displacement, comfort, and care. What it is to construct and make sense of positions in shifting cultural and technological matrixes.
Peter Bonnell, Quad senior curator said: “The shortlisted artists work offers a glimpse into the superb quality of work that continues to be produced in art schools across the UK.
“Quad and Format would like to thank everyone who submitted to the Future Focus Open Call and congratulate everyone who made it to the long and shortlist stages.
“Our jury had an incredibly hard decision to make considering the high quality of emerging talent who applied.”
The seven selected artists will also be eligible for a Quad award, Format award, John E Wright print award and the Audience Award sponsored by Unite the Union, to be presented during the exhibition period.
The remaining 18 artists from the shortlist of 25 will have their work featured in a looping slideshow on Quad’s Resource Area Big Screen.
The artists are: Alana Lindsay, Alexander Komenda, Anna
Sturgeon, Annabelle Richmond-wright, Ben Dawson, Callum O’keefe, Daragh Drake, Eden Sandy, Eleanor Sykes, Jasmine Pope, Khadija Cecile Niang, Megan Watson, Miriam Levi, Radek Wyjadlowski, Risa Ueno, Rosie Dale, Sophie Holden and Tina Salvidge.
The Future Focus programme aims to offer emerging creatives an opportunity to exhibit their work in QUAD’S Gallery space, alongside a range of exhibition bursaries, awards, portfolio reviews and mentoring support.
Quad and Format have a long-standing history of supporting early career artists through mentoring sessions, training opportunities, work experience, internships, portfolio reviews and exhibitions.
Future Focus takes places at Quad from January 29 to February 27, with a launch on January 28 at 6.30pm.
More at derbyquad.co.uk