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Review Aug 26 2010 « | »
Converse/Dazed 2010 Emerging Artists Award The recent emerging artist cash prize put up by Converse, publicised by Dazed and hosted by Stephen Friedman Gallery...

Holly White

Converse and Dazed and Confused are the next art prize sponsors to emerge from the corporate world. They have brought together five emerging artists and put them in an exhibition at Stephen Friedman.

This is a small group show including film and sculpture along with a series of photographs from the overall winner Peter Ainsworth. It's a serious and professional looking show, and although the artists are 'emerging' some are already becoming familiar names in the art world.

Francesca Anfossi's film 'Hand-Made Machines' stood out for me with its slowly animated images and collages set to clunky music and noise. The photos of scenery, situations and places lie somewhere in the gap between the new age cash-in and the sort of photographs you get when you give a child a camera and then there's a rainbow. It's crass and melancholy and in my opinion the most interesting work in the show.

There was also something curious in Steve Bishop's sculptural pieces. The layering, with its clipping and taping of colour and glass had the appearance of being casual and yet decided and refined. The confidence of the works gave them a vulnerability, not only in their physical fragility but also in their emotional resonance.

The overwhelming factor in award shows like this is the element of comparisons; as a viewer you can't help picking favourites, and as an artists it's hard not to let the spirit of competition influence what you show. Another symptom is that the curation becomes incredibly democratic, a democracy which can interfere with the placing of the works in an exciting way, because that might mean prioritising, or focusing on, some artists over others. The curation of this show was demure and ordinary and the possibility of engaging comparisons was lost in formality of the arrangement.

The quality and sophistication of the art was high, but this might of been because the judges played it safe with a selection good works that weren't particularly challenging or ambitious. But it was a showcase that led to me further investigating all five artists and possibly that was the point.

Becca Bland

Awarding interesting art and artists isn't something new, but in the current climate The Dazed/Converse Emerging Artists Award may set a precedent in understanding how art can survive the Cut.

Presented to a lively reception, The Stephen Friedman Gallery showed work from Steve Bishop, Peter Ainsworth, Laura Buckley, Jess Flood Paddock and Francesca Anfossi. Easily curated from installation to sculpture, the show looked fresh and treated each artist with due seriousness. Although there was little dialogue between the works, it was clear that standard and ambition in theory had been implicit in the judges choices.

An immediate cynicism on the lips of many (as comes naturally with handing over money), is what exactly do Dazed and Confused/Converse get from all this? Dazed and Confused, whom have long set the Zeitgeist for trend, had only a small influence on the judging with Art Editor, Francesca Gavin.

Whilst nominees certainly favoured a psychedelic edge on neon and indeed reality, Peter Ainsworth's winning photographic work is quiet and doesn't shout spectacle, not in the slightest. Converse similarly had little to do with anything but handing over the dollar, as they have been doing for decades with musicians and now art, it seems.

With such radically differing mediums, it would be hard to suggest that the winner was worthy/unworthy of £6,000. However the show itself is a genuinely pleasing and opportunity for exposure, from a generation that will most certainly come to rely more on these lotteries to support their talent.

The Converse/Dazed Emerging Artists Award took place between 30 July -21 August at Stephen Friedman Gallery. Read about the artists, including interviews, on the Dazed website here.

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