Research at the Ruskin
Christina Mackie awarded Arts Council England Oxford-Melbourne Fellowship 2010
Christina Mackie has been awarded next year’s Arts Council England Oxford-Melbourne Fellowship.
Christina will be conducting two months of research at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford in preparation for four months’ research and studio practice based at the Victorian College of Arts in Melbourne. During the course of her Fellowship, she will be developing ideas about geological time.
Christina’s works, which mainly take the form of sculptural installations, are layered, composite abstractions, and meditations of an emotional, physical or sociopolitical nature. Subjects have included communication and control, genetic engineering, and human and animal consciousness, all seen from a subjective standpoint.
In 2002, as a professor at CCA Kitakyushu in Japan, Christina produced a book calledThe feeling of being found out, and in 2005 she was chosen as the winner of Beck’s Futures. In the spring of 2006 she worked in Pakistan at the invitation of VASL Karachi.
Christina has had solo presentations of her work in Britain, Europe, America and Asia and has exhibited in group shows including The British Art Show 6, Tate Britain, Modern Art Oxford and the Henry Moore Institute, and in the Busan Biennial.
Christina is currently working on a project representing location as a composite of forces, possessing character and expressing power over geological time.
Arts Council England Helen Chadwick Fellow 2009-2010
London-based artist Tom Price has been awarded this year’s Arts Council England Helen Chadwick Fellowship.
Tom will be conducting a month-long reconnaissance in Rome in September, followed by two months of research at St. Peter’s College, Oxford in preparation for three months’ intensive studio practice at the British School at Rome. During the course of his Fellowship, he will be investigating the relationship between Rome’s public art and its modern population.
Tom’s work, which mainly takes the form of sculpture and stop-motion animation video, examines how pre-existing social and individual ‘filters’ affect our interpretation of visual clues - and consequently our perception of character and identity - and how the perceived identity of an individual is often used to represent more than itself.
In August 2008 Tom was chosen as the overall winner of Beck’s Canvas, which saw him follow previous artists such as Damien Hirst, Gilbert & George and Rachel Whiteread by having his work displayed on over 6.7 million bottles of Beck’s beer.
Tom has had a solo presentation of his work in Chicago (NEXT, 2008) and has been included in several group shows since leaving the Royal College of Art, including New Contemporaries 2006, Anticipation (The David Roberts Art Foundation, 2007), Video Apartment (Dublin, 2007), Freedom Centre – This Show Will Change Your Life (Hales Gallery, 2008) and 60 Miles by Road or Rail (Fishmarket Gallery, 2009).
Tom is currently working on a new series of bronze figure sculptures. These are based on individuals from the area around his studio in south London and will form part of his first solo show at Hales Gallery in 2010.
Arts Council England Oxford-Melbourne Fellow 2009
Berlin-based artist Daniel Gustav Cramer is this year’s Arts Council England Oxford-Melbourne Fellow. He is spending the first three months of 2009 studying in Oxford at Lady Margaret Hall and the Ruskin School of Drawing & Fine Art. This will be followed by four months of studio production at the Victorian College of the Arts in Melbourne.
Daniel describes his work as being most successful when it is plain, bland, simple and small. He is searching for images that link to larger images, which link to even larger images that might eventually link back to the first one. These days you might find him in the Radcliffe Science Library researching about the Solar System and the planets, which he plans to photograph in Australia. He is also gathering information about Jacques Piccard, the first man to dive in a submarine to the ocean bed of the Mariana Trench (-10916 metres) in 1960.
Since 2002 Daniel has been developing a photographic body of work called the Trilogy, which consists of three types of Ur-landscape - woodlands, mountains and ocean beds. For this series he has travelled all over the world, including Transylvania, Japan, California, Scotland and continental Europe. A new body of work called Tales is currently on show in the Jerwood Room in Lady Margaret Hall, and Daniel has received the Kunststiftung NRW grant supporting the development of this project later in the year.
Daniel is a winner of the Jerwood Photography Award, and he has shown in several exhibitions since graduating from the Royal College of Art, including New Contemporaries 2003, Berlin Biennale 5 (with Haris Epaminonda), Betonsalon, Paris and Kunstmuseum Bochum & Kunsthalle Emden. This year Daniel has been invited to exhibit in the Athens Biennale (Infinite Library) and has solo shows at Vera Cortes, Lisbon, BolteLang, Zurich and the Dortmunder Kunstverein. He will also be contributing to group shows in London, Berlin and Istanbul.