Radical Residency II
Gallery converted to working studios: 22 September – 20 October 2018
Exhibition private view: 23 October 2018, 6 – 9pm
Exhibition closes: 29 October 2018
Unit 1 Gallery | Workshop is opening its doors again for the second instalment of the Radical Residency programme. This dynamic and innovative opportunity provides 10 artists from across the world with a communal studio space for 4 weeks, culminating in a group exhibition featuring works created on the premises. Following its first iteration in April 2018, for the second Radical Residency 10 places have been awarded to a multi-disciplined group of artists from 5 different countries and with an age range of almost 40 years: Sol Bailey Barker, Gwenyth Fugard, Mirra Goldfrad, Connie Harrison, Jae Jo, Amina McConvell, Amy Mizrahi, Lucian Strindberg Boyle, Dominic Till and Frank Wasser. The Solo Studio Residency, with artist Bianca Barandun, will be running in tandem upstairs.
The Radical Residency programme is a direct response to the volume of high-calibre applications received for Unit 1 Gallery | Workshop’s 3 month solo residency. Due to the impressive standard of applicants, it seemed logical to expand the programme in a way which would also give the public access to the artists in a work-in-progress studio environment via a series of open discussions and critical seminars. Unit 1 Gallery | Workshop founder and director Stacie McCormick sees the Radical Residency as a means of providing not only space and time for artists to work on their own individual practices, but also to open up opportunities for dialogue and exchange, transforming the normally hushed gallery space into a thriving hub of potential provocation and conversation. This is a place where artists have a chance to learn from each other, disrupt their routine, change context, reflect comparatively, and garner feedback and support from both peers and visitors, all within a nurturing, professional space.
On the aspect of visitor engagement, McCormick further explains: “Through directly connecting to practicing artists there is a way for a broad community to profoundly engage with art by witnessing and understanding the process of its creation, which can truly enhance lives”.
Autumn 2018 Radicals:
Sol Bailey-Barker
The artist’s work explores the notion of body hacking and augmentation across the centuries, from ancient methods to contemporary prosthetics, to investigate how the development of technologies has influenced human nature and our perception of life and death. Working with found objects, Bailey-Barker’s abstract sculptures can be seen as instruments of rituals associated with agriculture and industry, technology and the machine. Bailey-Barker was awarded the Sculpture Prize of The Ashurst Emerging Art Prize (2017) and has exhibited widely across the UK and in Peru.
Gwenyth Fugard
A painter primarily engaged with the construction of painting. Her process involves tearing, stitching and collage, juxtaposing robust action with delicate fabrics and pigments to challenge assumptions about painting as an art form. Treating the canvas as a landscape, she invites the viewer to stop and contemplate the physicality of her work in a digital age. Fugard won the Tony Carter Award from City & Guilds London Art School in 2017, where she completed her masters. She has exhibited across the UK, including at Somerset House in London.
Mirra Goldfrad
Ideas for her installations first come when she envisions creating a space. Goldfrad’s works often reference the quotidian, seeking to question the textual materiality of experience and memory. Working with field recordings, sound editing and found objects, which are then cast in concrete, Goldfrad brings an essence of the familiar to her work in order to make us aware of, and thus question, the systems of categorisation which govern our everyday lives – albeit unknowingly and unseen. Goldfrad graduated in 2018 as an MFA candidate from the School of Visual and Performing Arts at Syracuse University. She was exhibited most recently in the SUart Gallery in Syracuse.
Connie Harrison
An artist who experiments with different materials and substances in her painting. From more traditional oil paints to lesser-used wax, Harrison applies layer after layer to the canvas, bestowing a handmade quality to the work in order to engage the viewer in a more intimate recognition of the individual behind the art. Harrison graduated in 2016 from the Chelsea College of Arts, London, and has exhibited with The Nunnery Gallery, London.
Jae Jo
Explores the relationship between artist and materials in her multimedia installations which often combine painting, sculpture and movement. Jae’s work reflects a process of dismantling and rebuilding, as she invites the viewer to regard the materials used as ‘cultural debris’, improvisational remnants of a larger system, repurposed within the gallery. Jae Jo is a graduate of the Royal College of Art, London.
Amina McConvell
An Australian artist who works with large-scale murals which respond to or reimagine scientific concepts. Amina is interested in exploring what she calls ‘Combinatorial Explosion’, which relates to the mathematical notion that when a number of combinations grows so exponentially fast, the equation ‘combusts’, or ‘explodes’. Her work spans various scientific fields, not limited to chemistry, biology and physics. Amina has recently been awarded a grant from the Australian Council for the Arts to pursue this project. She graduated from the National Art School in Sydney in 2007 and received an honours degree from Charles Darwin University, Darwin, in 2012.
Amy Mizrahi
Illustrations and paintings attempt to break free from the traditional assumptions of beauty. Through the autobiographical nature of her work, Mizrahi explores and confronts themes of self-identity, mental health and memory, seeking to engage the viewer in the realities of life as a female and working class artist. Amy co-founded SLOE Gallery, Manchester, in 2006 and has a degree in Illustration from the Manchester School of Art.
Lucian Strindberg Boyle
Painting is an act of performance. The bold shapes and colours which dominate his canvas are representative of the process of painting rather than its content. Working primarily as an abstract artist, Strindberg Boyle interweaves different mediums – from photography to sculpture – to create a feeling of spontaneity, disrupting the traditional process of painting. Strindberg Boyle graduated from the Slade School of Fine Art, London, in 2017.
Dominic Till
An artist whose work emerges from his intense observations of everyday life. Working with a wide variety of mediums including sound, sculpture or images, Till’s works are a sculptural process of layering, which he likens to Georges Perec’s famous 1975 text ‘An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris’. Till is a graduate of the Royal College of Art, London, (2017) and has exhibited internationally at Tate Modern in London, Warehouse 46 in Dubai and Acropolis in The Netherlands, amongst others.
Frank Wasser
An artist whose work is a continuous process of questioning, connected by the notion of making the self a subject. He works across many disciplines, from the production of texts and narratives to the creation of performances. In doing so, Wasser explores questions of identity politics, the object and its status and representation, asking the audience to ponder what it means to write, to be written, to mediate or to be mediated in a ‘post-truth’ world. Wasser studied Fine Art at the National College of Art and Design in Dublin, graduating with an MFA in 2012. His work was featured in the Venice Biennale in 2017, and he has worked with institutions including Tate in London.