2020 Create NSW & Artspace Visual Arts Fellowship shortlist

Congratulations Kate Brown, Julia Gutman, Tiyan Baker, Nadia Hernández, Dennis Golding, Akil Ahamat, Tarik Ahlip and Kirtika Kain; shortlisted for the ‘2020 Create NSW and Artspace Visual Arts Fellowship (Emerging)’.

In its 24th year with Artspace, the prestigious $30,000 Fellowship provides a NSW visual arts practitioner in the early stages of their career the opportunity to undertake a program of significant professional development and career advancement.

2020 NSW Visual Arts Emerging Fellowship finalists: (From top left) Kate Brown, Julia Gutman, Tiyan Baker, Nadia Hernández, Dennis Golding, Akil Ahamat, Tarik Ahlip and Kirtika Kain

Create NSW Executive Director Chris Keely said the long-standing Fellowship is an invaluable opportunity for emerging visual artists to receive support and exposure to the industry and display their craft for NSW audiences and the arts community.

‘Artspace’s annual commitment to collaboration and mentorship of each recipient is incredible to witness, and the result is a must-see exhibition that enhances deeper engagement with the NSW contemporary arts community and wider audience,’ Keely said.

Curators Alexie Glass-Kantor and Elyse Goldfinch add: ‘As a community we are experiencing complex and difficult times, COVID-19 has impacted all facets of our lives and we are also bearing witness to profound and necessary social change. 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 shaping an exhibition that will offer unique insight into their practices. We warmly congratulate the finalists and look forward to welcoming audiences to Artspace for this highly anticipated exhibition.’

Shortlisted artists will participate in an open Artspace exhibition from 31 October to 13 December 2020. The Fellowship winner will be announced and live-streamed at the official exhibition launch on Saturday 14 November 2020.

The shortlisted visual artists are:

Akil Ahamat
Akil is a multidisciplinary artist whose work draws upon his own online experiences to consider the physical and social isolation that often governs the shaping of identity in a contemporary context.

Tarik Ahlip
Ahlip’s studio practice focuses on sculpture and public art. Drawing from the artist’s background in architecture, Ahlip’s practice is informed by a concern for civics and architectural ideals, articulated across sculptural forms with a focus on casting and carving processes.

Tiyan Baker
A Malaysian Bidayuh/Anglo-Australian artist, Baker practices primarily in video and installation, engaging with sites where contemporary crises around neoliberalism, neo-colonialism, environmental degradation and psycho-spiritual alienation are staged.

Kate Brown
Brown is an interdisciplinary artist working specifically with the human voice. She is fascinated by how it sits in the body, how it is produced, and projected out to be placed elsewhere.

Dennis Golding
Golding is a Kamilaroi/Gamilaraay artist whose practice explores empowering representations of identity and race. Often referencing science-fictional narratives through the visual motif of the cape, Golding’s work focuses on varying relationships between pop-cultural figures and Australian colonial histories.

Julia Gutman
Gutman works with discarded textiles to produce sculptural deities and figurative tapestries. Positioned within a queer feminist critical dialogue, Gutman is interested in appropriating the aesthetics of categorically feminine crafts in order to embody a rougher more fluid language of representation.

Nadia Hernández
Hernández is an emerging artist whose visual arts practice is informed specifically by the current political climate of her home country and her diasporic experience as a Venezuelan woman living abroad.

Kirtika Kai
A Delhi-born, Sydney-based artist, Kain examines caste and patriarchal structures that have been enforced upon and embodied by generations before her. Drawing influence from Dalit literature and historical archives, Kain incorporates a myriad of materials that relate to themes of valuation, corporeality, ritual and tools of manual labour.

www.create.nsw.gov.au

www.artspace.org.au

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