The current exhibition at the gallery is the DLA Piper Graduate Art Award 2009. Over the course of last Summer, we visited approximately 40 degree shows across the UK, and presented a shortlist of 45 artists to a committee including Tony Bevan, the established British painter, Sue Hubbard, a freelance critic, and Alex Dell, a partner at DLA Piper. Six finalists were selected, and their work will be on display at the gallery until 13 June.
On the evening of the 21st May, DLA Piper opened the show, and selected Sachiyo Nishimura as the winner of this year's award. Sachiyo's photographs have urban landscape as their subject matter, exploring the homogenisation that human intervention causes to our environment.
Sue Hubbard wrote that:
The work that was finally chosen displayed not only skill and originality, but also showed an awareness of the world we live in, with its pressing problems of war, climate change, mental health issues and globalisation. Anahita Rezvanir’s Goyaesque images and Kate Ive’s subtle installation both demonstrate sensitivity to politics without ever being didactic, whilst Helen Saunders and Louise Carreck warn, in their uncanny images, of a dystopian future. Something, too, of the terrible beauty of industrialisation is captured in Sachiyo Nishimura’s poetic, yet spare images, while Sue Morgan’s installation, which borrows from surrealism, trawls the depth of the psyche, investigating mental fragility.
Our aim was to choose art that was not only visually engaging but that also made us think and challenged our preconceptions. We believe that this is what we have achieved with this brave new work.
