The Scottish artist Jame St Findlay has received the Claridge’s Royal Academy Faculties Artwork Prize. The prize, now in its second yr, sees £30,000 awarded yearly to a graduating scholar on the Royal Academy Faculties (RA) in London, and features a solo exhibition supported by Claridge’s lodge.
“The Royal Academy and Claridge’s are each dedicated to supporting artists at a time when charges for greater schooling are skyrocketing and the prices of artists’ studio areas in London are actually out of attain,” says a joint assertion. RA Faculties, a part of the Royal Academy since 1769, provides a free three-year programme to 17 early profession artists every year.
Eliza Bonham Carter, the curator and director of Royal Academy Faculties, says: “Jame St Findlay is an artist who works with movie and sculpture creating ornate, sprawling theatrical installations. Concepts of tragicomedy, codified or damaged techniques, and industrial and post-industrial landscapes are folded in as types and topics, absurd, messy, critical and acerbically witty in flip.”
In an interview with Metallic journal, Findlay says: “As a homosexual artist, exploring themes of heteronormativity or normalisation, normally, is way extra attention-grabbing to me than exploring my very own queerness; I really feel that I reside that on daily basis, and I need to use my work as a way of exploring different narratives.” Findlay’s work has been exhibited at Celine gallery and 16 Nicholson Avenue gallery that are each primarily based in Glasgow.
Final yr’s winner, Daria Blum, has launched her exhibition at Claridge’s ArtSpace (Daria Blum: Drip Drip Level Warp Spin Buckle Rot, till 25 October). A 3-channel video work reveals Blum sorting by way of a bundle of supplies present in a abandoned workplace block. The supplies evoke figures from the artist’s previous reminiscent of her late grandmother, the Ukrainian ballerina and choreographer Daria Nyzankiwska. Blum brings these characters to life in her performances enacted on a walkway raised above the ground.
“In an evocative dialogue with the subterranean structure of the gallery, the site-specific set up additional evolves Blum’s analysis into the connection between bodily area and muscle reminiscence, choreography and embodiment, and notions of institutional energy as they relate to bounce and structure,” says a mission assertion.
