It’s tough making money in the art world unless you’re ‘a name’ so winning an award like the Northern Art Prize can go a long way in supporting an artist’s practice. The prize is now in its six year and those lucky enough to be shortlisted work with the curator of Leeds Art Gallery, Sarah Brown, to put together an exhibition of recent and new works. This makes the award slightly different to others as Sarah explains: ‘The artists have made a number of new pieces for the show which gives this year’s Northern Art Prize exhibition an immediate sense of the artists’ current practice which is great for the artists, judges and audiences. ‘Each artist also has responded to the main ground floor galleries where the exhibition takes place and produced work that interacts with the doorways, walls and corners, making the exhibition distinctive to Leeds and the Northern Art Prize.’ This year’s shortlisted artists are Margaret Harrison, Rosalind Nashashibi, Emily Speed and Joanne Tatham & Tom O’Sullivan. Now it’s time to meet them…
Margaret Harrison has been producing work investigating politics, sexuality and irony since the 1960s. A series of her feminist drawings, described by the New York Times as ‘Superhero Shemales’, was buried until the late 90s and early 20s, caught between prudishness and suspicion at the sex object debates in the women’s movement. Harrison’s drawings found a new relevance and respect when they were exhibited in San Francisco in 2010. Based in Carlisle in Cumbria, Harrison will exhibit new works entitled ‘Reflect’, which consists of sculpture, painting and drawings. The work Common Reflections is a development of her 2012 Berlin solo show Fear Forgetting. This new installation, pictured, consists of two opposing constructions of concrete posts, wire, mirrors and corrugated zinc sheeting and is strewn with personal items – children’s clothing, toys, photographs and kitchen ephemera.It was initially produced to picture the occupation of a site next to Greenham Common in the 1980s where women created a peace camp to protest against the nuclear weapons sited there; the women used mirrors both to reflect the base and those guarding it.
Rosalind Nashashibi has exhibited in solo and group shows internationally. Working with mixed media and installation she explores the relationship between people, things and behaviour. Nashashibi uses film in much of her work, following her interest in its ability to express different layers of reality simultaneously, with a focus on the ‘magical friction’ caused by the juxtaposition of scenes shot from real life and fictional events, often taking place in public spaces. Living and working in Liverpool, Nashashibi’s exhibition will feature her 13 minute film installation Lovely Young People (Beautiful Supple Bodies), first seen at the Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art 2012. The compelling film projection features dancers, engrossed in private rehearsal when members of the local public walk in and stand awkwardly around them; mesmeric for both dancers and intruders, twinned together in an energetic performance. The new work, A New Youth (pictured), encourages a discussion on masculinity, icon and sexuality, exploring the dichotomy of two contrasting ways of looking.
Joanne Tatham & Tom O’Sullivan create staged theatrical experiences in their work which uses sculpture, painting, architecture, photography, performance and literature. Alumni of Glasgow School of Art, Tatham and O’Sullivan frequently employ the tools of theatre to frustrate straightforward interpretation of either text or object. Based in Newcastleupon-Tyne, Tatham and O’Sullivan have constructed two new temporary structures framing the entrances to two interior galleries, the Small Lyons and the Ziff Gallery, home to some of Leeds Art Gallery’s collection of Victorian Art. These large painted wooden ‘portals’ highlight the point at which the historic collection meets spaces in the gallery used for temporary exhibitions. Tatham & O’Sullivan will also show ten framed photographs of past projects in the various stages of production, documenting and giving an insight into their work processes which are often strongly influenced by the place where the work is sited.
Emily Speed’s work comprises sculptures, drawings, installations and documented performances and has been shown in group exhibitions nationally and internationally. The idea of shelter and the inhabitant is at the core of Speed’s sculptural work. Based in Kingsley, the Liverpool artist is interested in the strange perspectives and relationships between the people and architecture featured in Giotto’s frescos. Speed’s work asks viewers to experience and inhabit her bespoke architectural spaces. She has created a new work for the Northern Art Prize exhibition that includes wooden structures, cast plaster blocks and smaller assemblages. A single installation comprising several built and cast pieces reminiscent of a stage set, ‘Carapaces’ references architecture and the body, using the frescos of Giotto and his peers as inspiration. Giotto’s original frescos feature improbable, intimate and strangely scaled buildings which Speed compares to furniture and her works respond to this. The artist has created two pieces of architectural furniture for the exhibition, one that can be inhabited by visitors and the other that will be animated by performers during the exhibition.