Mark Tanner Sculpture Award Show: Anna Reading

About

Installed across a vinyl floor collage, Anna Reading’s The Pothole presents a series of new sculpture and performance works developed over the past year as the 16th recipient of the major UK Award.
 
Combining layers of surplus commodity materials, including shredded foam, gravel, oyster shells, bitumen, chip forks and cardboard, Reading creates a highly tactile and fragmented environment within Standpoint Gallery. The gallery becomes a physically animated space, in which the figure and its surroundings interconnect. Performances will take the form of direct interactions with objects, simultaneously responding to their affect whilst also projecting meaning.
 
Traversing sculpture, moving image and performance, Reading’s practice addresses the absurd relationship between the organic and the synthetic.  Sculptures appear familiar and puzzling at once, existing between life form & architecture, ancient & futuristic and decay & regeneration. Reading aims to foreground the illogical, the emotional and the sensory.
 
The Pothole will travel the UK as part of the new MTSA National Touring Programme, bringing exhibitions by winning artists to partner venues across the country.  Reading’s new body of work, plus new additions, will tour to Cross Lane Projects, Kendal, Cumbria from 25 October-14 December 2019, and Bury Sculpture Centre, Greater Manchester, from 7 March-20 June 2020. This is a major development for MTSA and will see the winner’s exhibition reaching new audiences across the UK.
 
The Mark Tanner Sculpture Award is one of the most significant awards for emerging UK artists working in the field of sculpture. It seeks to reward outstanding and innovative practice, with a particular interest in work that demonstrates a commitment to process, or sensitivity to material.   
Reading was selected from 260 applicants from across the UK by a panel comprising Claire Lilley, Director of Programme, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Cathie Pilkington RA, Frances Richardson MTSA winner 2017-18, and Rebecca Scott, artist and Mark Tanner Trust.  
 
Anna Reading (b. 1987, Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK) is a London based artist and a graduate of MFA Sculpture, Slade School of Fine Art (2017), where she received the Siva-Finestone Scholarship, and holds a BA (Hons) Fine Art, Central St Martins (2010).  Her work was included in Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2018. Recent exhibitions include Everything, Assembly Point, London. A Field Guide to Getting Lost, The Art Foundation, Athens. Cloud Concrete,Unit 1 Gallery, London. POND, Kaitak Gallery, Hong Kong. Loop,Lubomirov / Angus Hughes, London and Object 77B, Laure Genillard, London.