We M.A.D.E 10: M.A.D.E Solo Art Prize winners REVISITED

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M.A.D.E Solo Art Prize winners REVISITED  will feature current selected works by the 5 Solo Art prize winners to date, alongside MADE gallery’s own curators’ choice from their previous Solo Art Prize exhibitions at MADE, ranging from 2017-2022.

M.A.D.E Solo Art Prize Winners REVISITED, is an exhibition which reinforces the purpose of the original solo art prize - to shine a light  on talented artists based in South Wales, offering the chance to see how their practice has developed beyond their individual  Solo Art Prize exhibition presentations at Made. 

It is a chance to look back at memorable pieces, including the playful, subversive paintings depicting domesticity and maternal angst of Zena Blackwell’s first solo prize exhibition; ‘Seen and Not Heard’ in 2018, through to 2023’s; latest recipient Delphi Campbell, who’s show in 2024, we eagerly await. 

Zena Blackwell’s inaugural solo exhibition in 2018 marked the arrival of a tour de force presence on the Cardiff Arts Scene.  Juggling curation, motherhood and a serious engagement with painting, Zena has pursued her practice with the ambition of achieving a sustainable career, alongside artistic progression through evolving technique and pictorial scope.

In exploring the  particular realm of childhood, Zena has turned the convention of portraiture around; through her particular and recognisable language, painting has become the conduit to convey a parallel world, where the uncanny exists as the norm.

In the gaps between lockdowns in 2020, Lucia Jones presented ‘Tales from the cutting Room Floor’ a glossy, witty and luminous exploration through painting of female protagonist subjects, referring to Hollywood standards of glamour, revealed on the point of imploding, despite appearances.

Her latest works take further the idea of dislocated self identity - glimpses as to what we are missing revealed through its omission, the core of who we are, visibly blanked out of the ‘version’ presented; referring back to the stereotypical ‘feminine’ of the office serving the environment and social place, conforming to standards of decoration as if a part of the furniture; surface glamour is denoted by a red lip, hinting at the misogynistic reduction of woman to the realm of fetish, underlined through menial ‘roles’ of the receptionist, always struck behind a desk, seated. 

Perhaps these ‘retro’ tropes of womanhood are still current; it’s perhaps in looking backwards that Jones reveals the present; the pressure to appear perfect, to overstretch, to be expected to service others to the point of extinction.

The series of ceramic portrait tiles which formed part of Ellie Young’s 2022 joint solo prize winners’ exhibition ‘I want to believe’ are an attempt to document something of the artist's experience of the world via pop and high culture. They can represent an exorcism of ideas, an outlet for an over-saturation of images from film and television, in conjunction with a documenting of historic moments which resonate for her. Creating a dialogue between fast media and enduring images; for example Botticelli nymphs breathe visibly next to a 21st century celebrity smoking. The game of making the transient ‘breath’ visible through clay becomes the signifier and connector of times and worlds across all level of media. 

Kate Shooter jointly won the 2021 Solo Art prize with Ellie Young and in 2022 presented her solo exhibition Wicker Woman -  joyous, irreverent ‘reflections of Kate’s own self-navigation, wrestling with life living in a household of males, locating her own  Womaness, as an element which jostles and merges into a composite self.’ 

The latest works we are showing in this exhibition REVISITED, continue Shooter’s personal explorations, coming as they do from automatic responses via drawing. Appearing as expressions of more internal forces, urges of movement out from the body, away from facial recognition, the compositing of various versions / identities, as shown in the ‘grid’ (title) 

Delphi Campbell is the latest artist to receive the MADE Solo Art Prize.

Her work moves between whatever medium best articulates each expression of her being; soft sculptures, paintings and stitched ‘objects’ defy compartmentalism. Delphi explores the subject of daily encounters; living ‘life on an intersection’ with a system or framework which is loaded not in favour of living with the reality of an ‘othered’ body and identity. Delphi’s work naturally expresses life through a queer lense with humour, humanity and immediate grace which is generous in welcoming the observer.