Exceptional, The Collyer Bristow Graduate Art Award

About

The partners of Collyer Bristow LLP and Curator Rosalind Davis are delighted to announce the selected artists for the Collyer Bristow Graduate Art Award: Exceptional.
 
Jonathan Armour and Robert Taylor, Sophie Cero, Julia Court, Corinne Charton, Oli Epp, Lorraine Fossi, Gwenyth Fugard, Nicky Hodge, Katie Lennard, Karen Loader, Robyn Litchfield, Lucy McGeown, Abigail Phanggungfook, Tom Platt and Amelia Kate Sampson
 
Private View 20 June 6-9pm. 
The winner of the £2000 award and the staff prize will be announced at the PV
Exhibition continues 3 October 2018, Monday- Friday 9-5pm by appointment

The artists were selected from three leading art schools; Goldsmiths, Middlesex and City & Guilds of London Art School, graduating from their BA, MA & Post Graduate Diploma programmes between 2015 and 2017.
The guest judges for 2018 were:
Robert Priseman, Priseman Seabrook Collection
Anna Bromwich, Curator and Consultant, The Mall Galleries
Martin Caiger-Smith, Head of MA in curating at the Courtauld Gallery
Rosalind Davis, Collyer Bristow Gallery Curator, artist and writer
Steven Heffer, Head of the Gallery Committee and artist. 
 
“A fantastic opportunity for recent graduates and an exhibition of a high standard of both work and curation. Anna Bromwich 
 
'Opportunities such as this for new and recent graduates are crucial.  The Collyer Bristow Award is an enlightened initiative and Martin Caiger-Smith
 
It's exciting to see what the new generation of graduates are producing right now.” Robert Priseman, Priseman Seabrook Collection 

 
Rosalind Davis’ curatorial overview “the works in Exceptional 2018 are both diverse and divergent, however, the one thing that clearly links all these works together is a particular obsession; the way in which these 15 artists pore over their subject matter. There are works that are autobiographical, whether drawing on the everyday and transforming it into social and psychological narratives, others looking at historical and cultural biographies that are linked to identity. There are works about eradication –whether through the lens of colonialism and subsequent re-appropriation or the re-presentation of a bathroom where we cleanse and purify ourselves in daily ritual. There are constructions that refer to materiality or the body, the representation of re-imagined spaces, emotional terrain, spatial investigations, gravestones and climbing walls are also countenanced. Given such wide-ranging and layered themes Exceptional presents much to be considered from this promising group of recent graduate artists.”