AS well as the major political vote on 7th May you can also get voting for your favourite Catlin Artist all you need to do is head down to London Newcastle.
To help you choose we have put together a quick overview of the finalists in this years prize:
Jon Baker,mothers medal (blacked) no 93 C-type
Jon Baker (Chelsea College of Arts, BA Fine Art)
“I want people to consider physical display, power and status. The objects in the images can be described as representations of male and female bodies. The manipulation of the objects and the photographs themselves are partial substitutes for a male sexual drive: a celebration and a warning against power. To be clear, I believe that art should be critical of the society in which it plays a role. I have not made this work to praise masculinity, but rather to ask questions”
Felicity Hammond, Capital Growth detail
Felicity Hammond (RCA, MA Photography)
Felicity is a photographer and installation artist interested in how the fabric of urban life is in a constant state of renewal and decay. New work uses the language of advertising and design for luxury living, fusing digitally warped visions of opulence with the discarded material that it conceals.
www.felicityhammond.com
Oliver Hickmet, Let’s Go Swimming
Oliver Hickmet (City and Guilds of London Art School, BA Fine Art)
Oliver Hickmet is interested in how we are remaking the world. New work tackles the condition of space today; how places are reinvented using digitally constructed images. He looks at how property developments are branded and packaged as lifestyle concepts, and considers the effects of this translation process from hypothetical to realisation.
www.oliverhickmet.com
Nicholas Johnson in his studio portrait by Aaron Hammond
Nicholas William Johnson (RCA, MA Painting)
“I tend to say I paint flowers. I know it can come off as naive to say that, but I like the dissonance it can create around current discourses in art. For me the concept of decay is important; the idea that anything, if abandoned, will ultimately be reclaimed and re-purposed. Perhaps more accurately, my work is about finding a way to chart a whole host of influences and cultural and historical references within a painting. In other words, a method of mapping”
Paul Schneider (Royal Academy of Arts, London, PG Dip Fine Art)
“I want to create work that’s like walking into a cartoon, computer screen or collage. Pre-existing images and familiar languages of efficient communication – the graphic, the sign – become my vocabulary and subject matter.”
Lexi Strauss, Still image from Foundlings Find Their Mothers;. Paintings and animated, musical Installation
Lexi Strauss (RCA, MA Painting)
Lexi Strauss uses light and sound technology to make her paintings talk and sing.
“Certain paintings are ventriloquised in retrospect, while some narratives may pre-empt the image. I treat the separate elements in my work like Lego bricks. I construct new scenarios or configurations, both with bricks stolen from former bodies of work and with freshly created bricks. I guess the connected images, the music and the narratives reify one another”.
www.lexistrauss.com
Dominic Watson (The Glasgow School of Art, MFA Fine Art)
For the Catlin Art Prize, Dominic Watson has produced a series of paintings on the back of leather biker jackets. The imagery is taken from the covers of Mills & Boon books, a British publishing company synonymous with lowbrow romantic fiction. The sentiment conveyed in the imagery – in stark contrast to the invariably blunt form of sloganeering usually found on leather jackets – proposes various narratives and alternative roles for the wearer.
www.dominicwatson.net
Zhu Tian Dear Boss Kinetic Sculpture Varied 2014
Zhu Tian (RCA, MA Sculpture)
Zhu Tian’s practice encompasses sculpture, performance and installation. She combines humour with sharp critique and describes her work as “hiccups”.
“It means my work is an interruption: something to disturb the automated behaviour of robotic individuals. I’m always attempting to interrupt spectators’ life routines. I want to shift their attention and rupture their ideological habits. Part of that motivation is derived from my general frustration with how modern society is far too explicitly categorised”
You can vote for your favourite artist from 6pm on Thursday 7th May – there will be ballot boxes and stickers “I Voted Art Catlin” available.
The winners of this year’s Catlin Art Prize and the Visitor Vote will be announced on the evening of Wednesday 13th May, and will win £5000 and £2000 respectively.
Judges
Aaron Cezar is the founding Director of Delfina Foundation. Charlotte Schepke is founder of the successful new London art space Large Glass and was previously director of the Frith Street Gallery. George Vasey is the curator of the Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art in Sunderland and an independent writer.
Exhibition: The Catlin Art Prize 2015 Preview: 7th May 6-9pm Dates: 8th-30th MayLondonewcastle Project Space, 28 Redchurch Street, London E2 7DP
www.artcatlin.com
