<![CDATA[Pressat Main Newswire]]> https://pressat.co.uk/rss/ <![CDATA[Pressat Main Newswire]]> https://pressat.co.uk/media/site/logo.png https://pressat.co.uk/rss/ en-gb Copyright: (C) Pressat Pressat <![CDATA[ Christopher Cook London Solo Exhibition | Sunny Art Prize Winner ]]> https://pressat.co.uk/releases/christopher-cook-london-solo-exhibition-sunny-art-prize-winner-9655869f4a3f92140f0dd0a33c476060/ https://pressat.co.uk/releases/christopher-cook-london-solo-exhibition-sunny-art-prize-winner-9655869f4a3f92140f0dd0a33c476060/ Monday 3 August, 2020

Sunny Art Prize 2019/2020 – Prize Winner Solo Exhibition


August 14th – September 12th 2020


Closing the 2019 edition of the Sunny Art Prize is the prizewinner solo exhibition, Golden Age by British artist Christopher Cook. Cook will be exhibiting his latest series of monochrome paintings that use the Dutch still-life tradition as visual and conceptual backdrop to explore the consequences of colonialism, and the birth of contemporary capitalism. The show will be on view at the Sunny Art Centre (30 Gray’s Inn Rd, WC1X 8HR, London) from August 14th – September 12th 2020. The Press View of the exhibition is scheduled for Aug 19th-20th with the artist being present for Q&As. Please contact us to reserve a time slot in order to guarantee social distancing measures.


Christopher Cook is a contemporary visual artist who has worked in monochrome for the last 20 years, specifically using a fluid medium that combines graphite powder with resin and oil. He appreciates Odilon Redon’s position that ‘One must respect black, nothing prostitutes it. It does not please the eye, and it awakens no sensuality. It is the agent of the mind far more than the most beautiful colour of the palette or prism’. Monochrome has also opened up for him connections to early black and white photography, as well as gestural ink painting of the Eastern traditions.


The exhibited graphite images are made on coated paper, and produced with a performance-like process in which multiple ‘rehearsals’ are wiped away until Cook is ready to make the final image, usually over an intensive few days. His preoccupation with 17th-century Dutch still-life painting began with straightforward transpositions of iconic works, which developed into a sustained imaginative inquiry. The Dutch genre is renowned for its sumptuous beauty, but it was also intended as a display of wealth and power, reflecting the colonialist expansionism of that epoch, and this combination came to reflect for Cook a ‘coming of age’ of capitalism and materialism. This recognition prompted him to evoke contemporary implications of the genre, disrupting the beauty of the various tableaux through the addition of anachronistic elements, often militaristic, to suggest modern-day exploitation, conflict, and protectionism. Cook has stated however that he wishes to maintain a balance between his reverence for the original works and this iconoclastic tendency.


The art historian Jeanne Nuechterlein, in describing his work, remarks: ‘What Cook’s images do, is focus more squarely on the moral problems involved in the desire to accumulate and then protect wealth, problems he views as intertwined with the structures of capitalism - the urge to exclude or destroy any perceived threat to prosperity leads to defensiveness, social conflict, even military intervention. Thus are opened up new conversations with the traditions of Dutch still life painting.’


Christopher Cook’s work has received wide critical acclaim, and has been collected by institutions worldwide including the British Museum, the Fitzwilliam Cambridge, Cleveland Museum of Art, USA, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.


Paintings from this series were included as a contemporary intervention in the recent historical survey exhibition at York Art Gallery ‘Making a Masterpiece: Bouts and Beyond 1450-2020’.




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https://www.sunnyartcentre.co.uk/ 03 Aug 2020 13:24:56 GMT Entertainment & Arts Leisure & Hobbies
<![CDATA[ Christopher Cook Solo Exhibition | Golden Age | Sunny Art Prize ]]> https://pressat.co.uk/releases/christopher-cook-solo-exhibition-golden-age-sunny-art-prize-62e97e74ad44deddd09134547f9a65cf/ https://pressat.co.uk/releases/christopher-cook-solo-exhibition-golden-age-sunny-art-prize-62e97e74ad44deddd09134547f9a65cf/ Thursday 2 July, 2020

Closing the latest edition of the Sunny Art Prize is the new upcoming prize winner solo exhibition ‘Golden Age’. British artist Christopher Cook will be exhibiting his latest series of paintings exploring contemporary consumerism and capitalism using the tradition of the Dutch still life as the visual and conceptual backdrop for his artworks. The show will be on view at the Sunny Art Centre (30 Gray’s Inn Rd., WC1X 8HR, London) between Aug 14th – Set 12th 2020.


Christopher Cook is a contemporary visual artist who has worked in monochrome for the last 20 years, specifically using a fluid medium that combines graphite powder with resin and oil. Christopher appreciates Odilon Redon’s position that ‘One must respect black, nothing prostitutes it. It does not please the eye, and it awakens no sensuality. It is the agent of the mind far more than the most beautiful colour of the palette or prism’. Monochrome has also opened up potential connections to early black and white photography and gestural ink painting of the Eastern traditions.


The exhibited graphite images are made on coated paper. They are based on 17th-century Dutch still-life painting, a preoccupation of Christopher that began with straightforward transpositions of iconic works, but which became a sustained imaginative inquiry. A clear intention of the Dutch genre is to display wealth and power, colonialist expansionism, and beauty, and the more the artist looked, the more this contradiction came to reflect a ‘coming of age’ of capitalism and materialism. This recognition prompted Christopher to consider contemporary implications of the genre by disrupting the beauty of the various tableaux through the addition of anachronistic elements that suggested modern-day exploitation, conflict, and protectionism. However, he wishes to maintain a balance between his reverence for the original works and this iconoclastic tendency.


York Art Gallery’s curator Jeanne Nuechterlein in describing Christopher’s work remarked: ‘What Cook’s images do, is focus more squarely on the moral problems involved in the desire to accumulate and then protect wealth, problems he views as intertwined with the structures of capitalism - the urge to exclude or destroy any perceived threat to prosperity leads to defensiveness, social conflict, even military intervention. Thus are opened up new conversations with the traditions of Dutch still life painting.’


Christopher Cook’s work received critical acclaim and has been collected by institutions worldwide including the British Museum, London and the Metropolitan Museum of Art (MET), New York. Paintings from this series were also included in the recent exhibition at York Art Gallery ‘Making a Masterpiece: Bouts and Beyond 1450-2020’.




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https://www.sunnyartcentre.co.uk/ 02 Jul 2020 14:47:19 GMT Entertainment & Arts Leisure & Hobbies
<![CDATA[ Cultural extinction through the lens of Brazilian photographer Thiago Borba ]]> https://pressat.co.uk/releases/cultural-extinction-through-the-lens-of-brazilian-photographer-thiago-borba-30ded92f531f05c978bf403b5827955f/ https://pressat.co.uk/releases/cultural-extinction-through-the-lens-of-brazilian-photographer-thiago-borba-30ded92f531f05c978bf403b5827955f/ Monday 18 November, 2019

Hidden Paradise | Photographs by Thiago Borba is a new solo photography exhibition opening at the Sunny Art Centre in London on Dec 3rd 2019 and on view until Jan 31st 2020. The internationally acclaimed photographer Thiago Borba will display the work from his Black is Beautiful series of photographs, shot in his native country of Brazil. The exhibition wishes to explore the problem of cultural extinction which many minorities worldwide face as a result of assimilating or annihilating policies pushed forward by dominant cultures. Thiago portrays the Afro-descendant population of Brazil, especially in Bahia, creating images that exalt the power of their national heritage by uniting the lush Brazilian landscape and its people.


Thiago Borba is a contemporary photographer born and raised in Salvador, the capital of the state of Bahia, Brazil. The historic, complex culture of Bahia is one interwoven with tensions between a dominant display of white culture and its native black and mixed-race population. Bahia is the state with the highest percentage of black and mixed-race population in Brazil. Yet, white culture dominates the sociocultural context of mainstream media, thus projecting whiteness as the dominant culture while casting the native black and mixed-race identity as a minority group. Although around half of Brazilians identify themselves as black or mixed-race, there is still a sociocultural dominance of the white population that controls the mainstream media and cultural context of Brazil. As the son of a black father with a white mother, the artist is the result of this complex Brazilian racial colourism. He thus began the Black is Beautiful series as an investigation of the racial issues in Brazil.


The artist’s rich photos highlight the diverse beauty of Afro-Brazilian people and their connection to the beautiful natural landscape of Brazil. It initially focuses on dark-skinned black men and women from Bahia, as Thiago feels that “What is spoken of the magic of Bahia comes originally from the black. This energy they say that Bahia has is black. It’s the black person who produces that song. It’s the black who has that smile, and that way of talking that captivates you.”[1] He says that “The reason why my work focuses on this subject, is to search for a place of origin since my return to Salvador after ten years of absence; it was a way to reconcile with my city and my roots.” In his photographs, Borba takes us on a rich aesthetic journey that engages with issues surrounding cultural hegemony and historical injustices, while simultaneously simply displaying the joy and beauty of Bahia, its natural environment, and its people.


[1] Travae, M., ‘The Bahia artist Thiago Borba portrays black beauty and seeks to deconstruct racism in his photographic project “Black is Beautiful”’ (16/02/18, Blackwomenofbrazil.co). https://blackwomenofbrazil.co/the-bahia-artist-thiago-borba-portrays-black-beauty/




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https://www.sunnyartcentre.co.uk/ 18 Nov 2019 12:02:36 GMT Entertainment & Arts
<![CDATA[ Sunny Art Prize '19 | Art & the Costs of Human Progress | Press Release ]]> https://pressat.co.uk/releases/sunny-art-prize-19-art-the-costs-of-human-progress-press-release-8dc38aafc30ef802a0e6f5529d11f3c3/ https://pressat.co.uk/releases/sunny-art-prize-19-art-the-costs-of-human-progress-press-release-8dc38aafc30ef802a0e6f5529d11f3c3/ Monday 7 October, 2019

Sunny Art Prize '19 | Art & the Costs of Human Progress | Press Release

We live in a world that is increasingly divided on issues surrounding the recent costs of human achievement. Can art provide society with the tools to understand the nature of these many contemporary issues that people face across the world? This is the question that the Sunny Art Prize 2019 exhibition has explored with the artists selected to participate in a programme of travelling exhibitions. This programme of shows begins with the current exhibition in London at the Sunny Art Centre (on view until 31 October 2019, before the show travels to China).As with every edition of the Sunny Art Prize, 30 shortlisted artists from around the world see their work gathered together in an attempt to engage with themes such as colonialism, the current climate emergency and sharp extinction rates in the natural world, war and conflict, housing crises, mental health, identity and consumerism. They do this through a variety of mediums ranging from painting, sculpture and ceramics to video art, 3D work and installations. The London exhibition of the Sunny Art Prize 2019 will provide audiences with a chance to think about how societies and individual lifestyles contribute to the solution, or exacerbation, of some of the most pressing issues of human life.The top three winners of the 2019 edition of the Sunny Art Prize were announced during the opening of the exhibition in London. Christopher Cook won the first prize, which also included a cash prize of £3000. Emma Elliott won the second prize, which also included a £2000 cash prize. Eunmi Kim won third place with £1000. The first three winners will also get the chance to participate in an art residency in China. The residency will provide them with the opportunity to explore how different cultures relate to the issues that currently form the focus of their work.What are the themes and issues explored by the three finalists in their artworks?Christopher Cook – Breaking the Boundaries of History: Linking Tradition with Contemporary Capitalism, Materialism and OppressionBritish painter Christopher Cook has become known for his monochrome artworks in graphite powder, oil and resin. The shortlisted artworks The Thief, Skirmish, Shadowy and DMZ Still Life show detailed compositions that are purposefully reminiscent of the seventeenth-century Dutch still life genre. A clear intention of the Dutch genre is to display wealth and power, colonialist expansionism, and beauty. Also, the more the artist looked, the more this contradiction came to reflect a 'coming of age' of capitalism and materialism. This recognition prompted him to consider contemporary implications of the genre by disrupting the beauty of the various tableaux. He did this through the addition of anachronistic elements in his artworks that suggested modern-day exploitation, conflict and protectionism.His artworks shortlisted for the Sunny Art Prize represent a range of these themes, from the subtle mischief-maker lemur among the precious objects of The Thief, to the more overt threats of conflict in Skirmish and Shadowy. DMZ Still Life was created during a residency in Nicosia, Cyprus, and is a painting in which the displays of wealth and well-being become trapped and trivialised within a no-go zone. The viewer is invited to look closely and find the little anachronistic elements that subvert the narrative of what seems to appear as innocuous compositions.Emma Elliott – Biodiversity: Wry?No!Emma Elliott is a British sculptor whose central concerns are the incongruous and hypocritical aspects of humanity as well as the impermanence and fragility of the natural world. The shortlisted artwork Wry?No! is a sculpture that was hand-carved in Carrara marble and functions as a commentary on the ills of machismo trophy hunting and the illegal horn trade. This human endeavour is responsible for decimating the world's rhino population by more than 90 per cent over the last 40 years.With ground rhino horn being worth more than gold on the illegal rhino horn market and considered to be a cure for many common ailments in traditional medicine, this work highlights the fallacy that it can heal. The marble artwork also stands as a wake-up call following the recent WWF Living Planet Report 2018 on biodiversity. The report highlighted how human activity alone caused a 60 per cent decline in overall biodiversity just in the last 40 years. These rates have only been seen with mass extinction events in geological history. Unlike with previous extinctions, however, it appears that one species alone is fully responsible: Homo sapiens.Eunmi Kim – Exploring the Sensory Overload in Contemporary SocietyEunmi Kim was born and raised in South Korea. She is mainly interested in sensory perception and its corresponding communication. Her works tend to be self-reflective and research-driven while also being related to her scientific and medical interests, reflecting on cognition, neural activity, sensory deprivation, and sensorial and therapeutic experience.As a person with hyperthyroidism, Kim is a solitary being who can easily be pushed into sensory overload. To confront her vulnerability, her multimedia project Me-Time (4.0): Mindfulness-Introspection-Void aims to realign the mind and body by reducing sensory stimuli while experiencing and expanding an awareness of the self. Her video installation comprises a series of self-experiments. They are conceptually-led performances shot at various locations that use introspective, meditative and eccentric methods of restricted environmental stimulation therapy (REST). As a coping mechanism, Kim chooses off-grid places that reduce sensory stimuli. These allow for subjective experiences of self-isolation and avoidance so she can ultimately enjoy a personal space, time and experience.




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https://www.sunnyartcentre.co.uk/ 07 Oct 2019 16:39:26 GMT Entertainment & Arts