Following the announcement in July of the eight shortlisted finalists for the 2020 NSW Visual Arts Emerging Fellowship, details of their new works have been released by Artspace and Create NSW. With over 100 years of history, the Fellowship plays an integral role in profiling the breadth of NSW-based artists in the early stages of their career and the dynamism of their practice and will award one of the eight finalists with $30,000.
The exhibition opens at Artspace in Sydney on 30 October and runs until 13 December 2020. Alexie Glass-Kantor and Elyse Goldfinch, the show’s curators stated, ‘In this current moment Artspace and Create NSW believe that the 2020 NSW Visual Arts Emerging Fellowship offers a critical opportunity for professional development for emerging artists through curatorial advocacy and engagement. We are honoured to be working collaboratively with the eight outstanding artists who are all new to the Fellowship and to jointly shape an exhibition that will offer unique insight into their practices.’
Julia Gutman, untitled, 2020, work in progress. Courtesy the artist and Artspace Sydney
The exhibited works include a large-scale immersive glass sculpture and sound work by Akil Ahamat, which provides a physical simulation of the encounters experienced in the digital realm. An installation by Tarik Ahlip which incorporates resin casts, video and a suspended water lens, manipulates water and light to distort our relationship with the visible. Tiyan Baker also uses resin, with her sculpture and olfactory work drawing on her Bidayuh ancestry and the traditional practice of durian fruit farming. Dennis Golding has created sculptural and photographic works focussing on Australian architecture to investigate colonial practices and structure of land ownership and built design. Positioned within a queer feminist critical dialogue, Julia Gutman is exhibiting large scale embroidered tapestry works, while Nadia Hernandez has developed a seven-meter suspended textile work developed in an inter-continental collaboration with her mother and grandmother, and Kirtika Kain’s sculptural wall work and screen-print series interrogates languages as a weapon of oppression.
The selected Fellowship finalist will be awarded during an online event on Saturday 14 November – stay tuned!
