WOON
FOUNDATION
PAINTING AND
SCULPURE PRIZE
3 July – 2 August 2015
BALTIC’s project space at BALTIC 39
INTRODUCTION
JUDGING PANEL
BIOGRAPHIES
BALTIC’s project space at BALTIC 39 presents for the first
time the annual Woon Foundation Painting and Sculpture
Prize, a vibrant exhibition by talented graduating artists
from across the country. This unique and highly prestigious
award, presented in partnership with Northumbria
University, has been made possible by the University’s
alumnus and art collector Mr Wee Teng Woon.
Fiona Bradley has been Director of Edinburgh’s
Fruitmarket Gallery since 2003. She has overseen major
exhibitions including Martin Creed, Jim Lambie as well as
the forthcoming Phyllida Barlow exhibition. Fiona was
previously curator at Tate Liverpool and Hayward Gallery,
London and is a former Turner Prize judge. Amongst
other things Fiona has been credited as responsible for
the first British exhibitions of the work of Rachel
Whiteread and Andreas Gursky. Fruitmarket Gallery
believes in promoting Scottish artists alongside
international artists, Fiona selected and curated the 2011
Scotland + Venice, Venice Biennale exhibition by Turner
Prize nominated artist Karla Black.
Mr Woon is a Northumbria University Law graduate who
mainly lives in Singapore but has maintained strong links
with the North East and still has a home in County
Durham. He has initiated this beneficent award to support
the practice, career and early professional development
of emerging young artists, while enhancing the profile of
the North East to the general benefit of the energetic arts
community in the region.
The Woon Foundation Painting and Sculpture Prize offers
an exceptional opportunity for students currently in their
final year of undergraduate study in the United Kingdom.
Mr Wee Teng Woon kindly funds three major prizes and
discretionary commendation prizes each year to the value
of £40,000 through his family’s foundation. The first prize
of the Woon Tai Jee Art Fellowship is awarded as a
£20,000 bursary, which funds a Fellowship at the BxNU
Institute of Contemporary Art at BALTIC 39. The selected
artist will work for a year in the Woon Tai Jee Studio
BALTIC 39, in the heart of Northumbria University’s
postgraduate community, receiving mentorship from
Northumbria’s Fine Art Staff.
The winner of the inaugural Woon Foundation Painting
and Sculpture Art Prize was Holly Hendry. Since winning
the prestigious award and studio space in BALTIC 39,
Holly has exhibited work in a solo exhibition at
Northumbria’s Gallery North and in Sharjah, United Arab
Emirates with work commissioned by the Sharjah Art
Foundation. She has recently completed the Master of
Fine Art programme at the Royal College of Art. Ramona
Zoladek is the current Woon Tai Jee Fellow.
Jenni Lomax, Director of Camden Arts Centre (since
1990), she has steered the gallery for many years and
has overseen the capital campaign and regeneration
project in 2004. Jenni has also been a Turner Prize
judge, before 1990 she was head of education at
Whitechapel Gallery. Originally trained as an artist, Jenni
developed a passion for education and promoting
engagement in galleries through her teaching at various
art schools and visits to galleries. Jenni has overseen
residencies at Camden Arts Centre by Mike Nelson,
Martin Creed, Enrico David and Anne Hardy.
Laurence Sillars is Chief Curator at BALTIC Centre for
Contemporary Art in Gateshead. Previously, he was
curator of exhibitions and collections at Tate Liverpool.
Laurence has worked on a wide range of exhibitions,
projects and publications including recent solo
exhibitions by Daniel Buren, Lorna Simpson and Jim
Shaw. Laurence co-curated the first Turner Prize
exhibition to be held outside of London in 2007 and then
again at BALTIC in 2011. Currently he is working on
major solo exhibitions by Fiona Tan and Omer Fast.
As chair of the panel BALTIC Professor, Christine
Borland is an artist with a global reputation for
collaborative, interdisciplinary practice-led research
involving science and medicine. A former Turner Prize
nominee, her work explores the ethics of art, medicine
and science from both a contemporary and historical
perspective. Christine has extensive experience building
innovative partnerships. She has collaborated with the
Medical Research Council’s Social and Public Health
Sciences Unit, Medical Humanities, School of Medicine,
University of Glasgow and the Peninsula Medical School
in Cornwall. Christine’s work has been shown
internationally in numerous museums and large-scale
exhibitions including the Centre for Contemporary Art of
South Australia, Kunstverein Munich, Germany, the Fabric
Workshop & Museum, Philadelphia, ICA London and at
the Lyon Biennial, Manifesta 2, Venice Biennale and
Münster Skulpturen Projekte 3.
SHORTLISTED
ARTISTS
Queenie Clarke / Daniel Crooks / Martin Darbyshire
Jadé Fadojutimi / Harry Fletcher / Joshua Fox
Lewis Henderson / Kayt Hughes / Mark Mindel
Emma Papworth / Neena Percy / Jacob Watmore
QUEENIE
CLARKE
Queenie Clarke is a recent graduate from Camberwell
College of Arts where she studied Fine Art. Her practice
focuses on the engagement between architecture,
movement and interaction. Looking at the moments these
three subjects meet and with those findings, trying to
find a way to transform and expand on the current
perception the viewer has, is an element she is eager to
play on within her work.
Throughout the three years of studying and living in
London she has taken part in group exhibitions in various
galleries where she has been involved in making site
specific work. These have ranged from traditional galleries
to spaces such as an unused office on Oxford Street. In
August 2014, she took part in an architectural workshop
located in a small village in the north of Japan, Koshirakura.
Queenie and a group of architecture students spent their
visit designing and making transforming, adaptable,
furniture, alongside taking part in the local annual festivals.
This exciting way of working meant that she learnt a lot
about building in her time there, which has resulted in the
making process of Queenie’s own work playing a large role
in her practice overall.
Queenie Clarke, Escalator 0.2 2015. Plywood, flexible plywood, glue,
steel & bolts.
DANIEL
CROOKS
Artist Daniel Crooks, born in Sheffield, graduated from
Leeds College of Art in 2012 with Art and Design
Foundation, and is a 2015 graduate of Goldsmiths
University of London’s BA Fine Art programme.
He has participated in exhibitions at Menier Gallery,
London 2014; LGBTQ, Goldsmiths University of London
2014; Central Gallery, Reading University 2013; This
Way Up, Leeds College of Art 2012, and has published
works in magazines This And That Collective 2013; The
Dream Issue 2013.
Crooks’ current practice involves using [readymade]
sculpture in which he actively constructs an other
aspect/addition to elevate the object into a different
context. The other offers the suggestion of movement.
Crooks proposes that the possibility of movement in
sculpture is transcendent, beyond our assumptions. The
potential of art, as comprehended by the viewer, is very
important to Crooks. He chooses to simultaneously
provide the viewer with enough information to generate
further interests but not enough to constrain meaning.
‘Sculpture is no longer expected to remain static on the plinth’
Daniel Crooks
Daniel Crooks, Suggestion 1 2014. Breeze block, brass and castors.
MARTIN
DARBYSHIRE
Martin Darbyshire’s sculptures occupy the ‘psychotic
state’ that Benjamin Buchloh described as the only
practice the contemporary sculptor can articulate.
Darbyshire uses the iconography of modernism for what
he claims is a “reflective tool for the continuation of order
(of the self) within a self-prescribed psychotic state.” It is
possible then, that his work falls neatly into what Zygamut
Bauman says is the modern condition of seeking control
over the trajectory of fate.
The work is less of a sum total of abstract forms and more
a narrative on modernism. It is perhaps the modernist
myth of ‘perpetual motion’ that has and is leading us
faster and faster toward the destruction of our planet. This
myth has become so deep rooted within our capitalist
culture that by revisiting its origins we can begin to
re-evaluate our human values that have become warped
by unrepentant progress.
Darbyshire’s recent collection of sculptures account for a
compromised existence between language of signs and
embodied self. Between digital and what we still refer to as
‘the real’. Proposing questions rather than answers,
Darbyshire asks that we reassess some of the
fundamentals before walking blindfolded into the unknown.
Left: Martin Darbyshire, Ziggurat 2015. Chipboard, concrete, concrete
pigment, vinyl, ducting, gaffer tape, metal lathing; Middle: Martin Darbyshire,
Modular Modernism 2015. Chipboard, paint, varnish, ply, herculite,
stoneware; Right: Martin Darbyshire, Untitled 2015. Steel, concrete,
veneered chipboard, paint, varnish, plaster, shellac, concrete pigment.
JADE
FADOJUTIMI
Jadé Fadojutimi is a British painter born in East London, UK
in 1993. Her work explores connections between childhood
experience, trauma, escapism and memory through painting;
predominantly involving acrylic and pastel. She focuses on
painting abstract places that exist in the mind and take on
the form of landscapes. Although independent from themes
of identity, gender and race; these are important themes
surrounding the works.
Paintings draw upon a lack of understanding and worry
about one’s place in society and the subsequent
romanticising of an alternate place; whether it’s of the
physical or imaginary world. Japanese subculture;
especially animation and the everyday alternative visual
style, feeds into a fascination with escapism.
Fadojutimi explores a wider societal understanding of
comfort and sense of place and translating childhood
naivety into adult though through materials. Emotional
paintings question pleasure and appeal. Fadojutimi
engages in painting as a poetic, emotional and lyrical
process that can be expressed.
Jadé Fadojutimi intends to complete a Master of Art in
Painting at the Royal College of Art.
Jadé Fadojutimi, Swamp 2015. Acrylic and pastel on canvas.
HARRY
FLETCHER
Sculptor Harry Fletcher explores moments of connection
and conflict in materials, and the consequence of placing
them in a space. Looking closely at the materials in the
constructed environment – an environment which is both
territorial and expanding, Fletcher creates threedimensional forms by combining concrete, plastics and
organic matter. While lacking figural qualities, the
resultant forms carry humanistic elements through the
material composition evident in the sculpture’s skin. His
consideration of environmental conflict is manifested in
the process of production.
Digging into exposed earth to create the moulds, forcing
a bind between built and natural material; parasitically
latching on and pouring the concrete mixtures, allowing it
to slump, spill and territorialize the space. Suffocating the
soil beneath as it clings onto the concrete, deepening and
widening the scar in the ground. This fight between the
Harry Fletcher, It’s there,right over there. Squeeze your stomach and
stretch your pockets 2015. Steel, concrete, marble, PVC
ground and the concrete is both a correspondence and a
conflict for space and existence. The process of making,
combined with material research, is an integral part of his
practice. Exploring material properties in large-scale
forms, Fletcher magnifies atomic movements of the
synthesis of materials.
Smothering connotations of historic with synthetic. This
direction is the result of research into plastiglomerates, or
newly noted rocks formed from the fusion of fabricated
materials with biological matter. Fletcher fuses qualities
from separate materials to create new hybrids, changing
the sensoaesthetics and ultimately the perception of the
material that germinates within a space. By creating
sculptures straddling an uneven balance between the
inorganic and organic materials, he creates a bookmark,
capturing the moment at which the fusion of humanity’s
material output morphs into the natural environment.
Harry Fletcher, It’s coming close,
so don’t crawl 2015. Steel,
concrete, marble, PVC.
JOSHUA
FOX
Joshua Fox is a graduate of the exploratory Fine Art for
Design programme at Batley School of Art in West
Yorkshire. Using visual metaphors to communicate the
instability of neurological conditions, he explores the
individualised nature of conditions and their manifestations.
Joshua Fox has lived with uncontrolled, unpredictable
cryptogenic epilepsy since the age of five. His work is
heavily influenced by an attempt to gain control of the
uncontrollable on a daily basis. Fox explores innate
vulnerability and instability and presents visualisations of
the internal through a range of varied external forms. This
approach also echoes Fox’s own daily struggle to both
cope and articulate his own neurological condition.
‘By combining personal experiences with personal
strengths I try to externally communicate an essence of
something that is somewhat isolating and visually hidden’.
Joshua Fox
Joshua Fox, Ladder 2 2014. PVA and paper
Joshua Fox, Ladder 3 2014. PVA and paper
LEWIS
HENDERSON
Accept our guilty pleasures; garish colour, decadent
dumbness, Beyonce, 2005’s yellow and play-doh.
Ignorance is bliss, give me a kiss. Pop ups with a
Photoshop aesthetic, iced like a cake, sickly sweet. It’s too
good to be true, we’ll all end up fat and old. Who cares?
my sugar?”. Have children so you can justify going to
Disney Land on holiday. Steal your own ideas. Re-blog
the appropriation, Schwitters is turning in his grave. You
have the past at your fingertips. There is no history, only
recorded history. Aesthetics or athletics? “What will it
be?”Slouch at the back lean back on your chair like you
don’t take this seriously, this is your party. “Happy
birthday darling!” Make your gestures dis-passionate –
expressionism’s over exhausted, it’s about time we put
her to bed. This is the age of skin-deep beauty, bring on
the Disney Land decadence. “I want to drown in fake
tan.” “Are you sure you’ve never been lobotomised?”
Embrace your fetish.
It’s either big or small, there is no half measure. Playful
humour is a weapon, a fly zapper for the open mind. Be
your own assistant – embrace the bipolar architect “I hate
my boss I don’t even get fag breaks,” “Fuck you, where’s
Give up the myth of the artiest, they are all smoking
clowns. Add more sugar, when does it become too
sweet? All bubbles burst, it was fun while it lasted, things
will never be the same.
A passive aggressive style, subtlety sexual in nature, a cry
for help in a padded room. A confusing ‘fuck you’ to the
fat cats and the cloud dwellers who we all wish deep
down to be. Let’s flip things on their heads, let’s turn
plastic into plaster. Let’s make it thick over thin, impasto
over silky smooth. Paint so thick you could peel it off like
a sticker.
Lewis Henderson, The Sound Of
A Bubble Bursting 2015.Oil on
canvas, stacked on plaster
capitals.
KAYT
HUGHES
Kayt Hughes’ current work explores the discord and
harmony of structure and spontaneity. Overlapping
systems, testing and re-testing, calculating and
recalculating, and pushing to the point of folding
in on itself, Kayt Hughes creates new propositions
for investigations.
The objects translate the authentic musicality of the
original act through their relationship to one another, and
the space, with subtle gestures and physical interactions.
Hughes curates objects as a composer would notes on
the stave, making phrases through an understanding of
the properties of the objects.
The objects are subjected to a repetitive process of
curation and re-curation, as the potential for these
elemental objects to take on different roles is tested
through their calculated placement within the space. The
sculptural notation of an improvised musical study creates
a physical score that can shape to new adaptations of the
phrases, and constructs a frame for performative gesture.
These spontaneous acts are harnessed through the
subjective logic of the artist’s own interpretation and with
reference to the musical structures from which it originates,
boundaries are set for a chance action.
Objects openly reveal calculations and the process of
fabrication, collecting information and adapting to new
narratives. They speak for the artist and notate her
actions; exposing processes and continually informing the
artist’s decisions as she develops through intuitive play.
Kayt Hughes, Study Scores, 2nd Movement 2015. Wood, emulsion, filler and pencil
MARK
MINDEL
At once humorous, aggressive and nervous, Mindel’s
performances and installations use familiar materials and
objects which converge at terrific points, forming
subverted figures, images and atmospheres. Using
sound, action, style and design to form these works,
these elements are begged, borrowed and stolen from
the interstices of the natural and cultural worlds.
Mark Mindel, Log-box 2015,Tanalised wood, metal and K cider
Above: Mark Mindel, Hu R Ya (decoy) 2015, Golf umbrella, towel, flint, glue, wood and runner bean
Mark Mindel, Charging 2015, Wood and plug adapter.
EMMA
PAPWORTH
Emma Papworth’s practice has developed through a
process of deconstructing painting. By initially
questioning the inherited, formal aesthetic problems
concerned with painting, and the historical conditions
tied to this medium, she explores the dialogues that are
continuously rethought within painting and seeks to
question its validity and status. By deconstructing,
dividing and restructuring painted surfaces and
positioning them in space, she approaches painting
sculpturally, and as a means of instigating active
dialogues with other objects, environments and people.
Papworth often uses architectural and industrial
structures to give paintings form, allowing them to take
on impressions of functional objects.
Using materials that are soft and yield to physical
pressure, Papworth’s works occupies a mid-point
between action and inaction, a state of deterioration and
future action. She often fills the two dimensional surfaces
with different formless materials such as; sand, plaster,
rice and wadding, as well as organic and found materials,
emphasising the transitional qualities of materials. She is
particularly interested in using plaster because of the
way it starts as something free flowing and formless, then
becomes rigid, fixed and immovable. The qualities of
energetic material self-definition continues to drive
Papworth’s practice, furthering her fascination with soft
sculpture and how it surrenders itself to the natural
conditions that pull our bodies down, and yields to
physical pressure. The works could be seen as being in a
constant state of flux, disruption and indecisiveness,
drawing similarities between qualities of materials and
human agency.
Emma Papworth, Narratives of production 2015. Installation view; Canvas, Acrylic, plaster, sand, latex.
Emma Papworth, Social Fiction 2015. Acrylic, canvas, plaster, sand, metal structure.
NEENA
PERCY
Neena Percy (b.1992) is a recent graduate of the Fine Art
programme at Slade School of Fine Art in UCL, London.
Throughout her undergraduate studies, Percy has
exhibited widely in London, including exhibitions in 2015
at 12 Star Gallery and The Horses’ Hosptial. In 2014,
she took part in a performance night in Fat Relic and
South London Open House Festival. In autumn of 2013,
Percy attended the New York Studio School, New York,
and presented works in an exhibition.
Percy explores the representation of women through
paintings that distort assumptions associated with
femininity. She uses fluid glossy brushstrokes to
transform luscious hair into abstract forms. Her practice
expands into bright patterned screen-prints and use of
the space to bring the paintings together; that, between
them, are celebratory with an underlying questioning of
traditional representations of the female form.
Neena Percy, Flicking Blue 2014. Oil on canvas.
Neena Percy, A Skin You Love To Touch 2015.
Oil and screen print on canvas.
Neena Percy, How You Like It 2015. Oil and acrylic on canvas.
JACOB
WATMORE
Jacob Watmore (b. 1991) lives and works in London
and has recently graduated from Central Saint Martins,
BA Fine Art (sculpture) programme. Co-founder of
12ø collective, an artist-run space based in Stoke
Newington, London.
You’re reading a statement about the work of Jacob
Watmore. You’re being placed into a situation where
the artist is playing with fiction and reality through the
use of language.
The objects around you are evidence to a possible fiction
that you may take part in, asking you to pretend with the
work, a potential event. These objects aim to be placed
in a method of creating something that might already
exist, an orchestrated situation that mimics the everyday
use of objects to provide evidence of a possible fiction.
The written word takes you to a hypothetical point within
this moment, in an attempt to suspend disbelief. This
language is used to reference things outside of your
present perception, a space where nothing can really be
certain. It’s your own choice whether its reality or fiction,
since language doesn’t have the ability to hold a
concrete inbuilt truth and a concrete connection with this
world. In this context something might be part of reality
but in the next it may have no relation to it.
You may pick up on the use of performative language
within the work, the act of hypothesising, being a fiction
within reality, along with the use of directive or
instructional material. This is used to affect the world
around you, to manipulate this moment, rather than
reporting or describing it, an attempt to create something
with your cooperation. This is somewhat like making a to
do list rather than a concrete set of actions, an event that
may prompt a form interaction instead of a thing for you
sit back and observe, it requires you to activate it.
Jacob Watmore
Jacob Watmore, This pot was made for you 2015. Table, scripts, lamp, pot, doorstops.
WOON FOUNDATION
PRIZE WINNERS
HOLLY HENDRY 2013
RAMONA ZOLADEK 2014
HOLLY
HENDRY
Holly’s research during her residency at BALTIC 39
continued an examination of our use of spaces and
places, pushing her sculptural works to explore the
space between construction and collapse, expansion
and contraction.
During the fellowship she developed works that
addressed the history of sculpture and making, and
indulged in a fascination in the restoration processes on
historical sites, such as the Parthenon, and the details of
armatures and support structures that are not traditionally
on show. Working with symbols of architecture (such as
the column or the arch), her works attempted to question
the monument or the intrinsic historicity of architecture.
Through looking at places like Newcastle, where the city
has been put back together and chunks of the old wall
are used to build a corner shop or cafe, her sculptures
took on a fragmented modular nature, where the work
was always in pieces. She was making things behave like
tiles or bricks to create building blocks from the symbol
of the building itself.
For the culmination of her residency, Holly created a solo
show in Gallery North titled Hollow Bodies. This new
body of work examined flatness and fullness: a giddy
floppiness of excess materiality. Translating
measurements derived from architectural interiors into
inflatable forms, the materials that make two dimensions
into three were employed to create objects that are made
from spaces.
Holly has since exhibited in galleries across the UK and in
Sharjah, United Arab Emirates, with work commissioned
by the Sharjah Art Foundation. She has recently
completed the Master of Fine Art programme at the
Royal College of Art.
Top: Holly Hendry, The Hoarders and Wasters - I Need You to Knead Me 2014
Bottom: Holly Hendry, The Hoarders and Wasters – Torso 2014 Courtesy the artist.
RAMONA
ZOLADEK
CURRENT WOON FELLOW
I think the Woon prize is a unique prize and provides
support for an emerging artist during the crucial stage of
their practice. The prize creates opportunities to exhibit
and meet other artists as well as working alongside them
in an incredible environment. It also gives a really good
insight into what the life of a full time artist feels like. I
would say it was not an easy year but this is partly what
makes it interesting and it proves that an artist’s life is
not simple!
After receiving this prize I knew another opportunity like
this may never come around again and I wanted to make
the most of my time. During my year on the fellowship
I tried to consolidate my practice but at the same I spent
a considerable amount of time undertaking further
experimentation with materials and processes. I received
valuable advice from technicians and students at
BALTIC 39 for which I am very grateful. The fellowship
also emphasises how important it is to find a balance
between making work, contextualising it and putting it
out there for people to see and gain feedback.
As my practice often refers to the relationship between
architecture and nature, I find Newcastle a very intriguing
and inspiring place to work and my recent work includes
references to its architecture and history. During the
fellowship in Newcastle I also managed to obtain a
studio space in Canada and create works for an
exhibition in Toronto. Subsequently I have exhibited
in the UK in Cambridge, London and Newcastle.
Ramona Zoladek
Top: Ramona Zoladek, Unfamilliar Landscape 2014.
Soil, flour, beetroot powder soup, mixed seeds;
Bottom: Ramona Zoladek, City Landscape 2015.
Plaster, rubber, paint, photographs.
Ramona Zoladek, Miami Newcastle
2015. Plywood, plaster, tiles, a plant
Image: XXXX
Northumbria University and BALTIC would like to thank
Mr Woon and his family for their generous contribution
to supporting emerging talent, to his contribution to
the community of academics and artists at the BxNU
Institute of Contemporary Art and to the cultural life of
the North East.
We would also like to thank our judging panel, Chaired
by BALTIC Professor Christine Borland, BALTIC Chief
Curator, Laurence Sillars; Fiona Bradley, Director of the
Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh; and Jenni Lomax,
Director at Camden Art Gallery, London, for their time,
effort and expertise in selecting the short-listed artists
and award winners.
WOON FOUNDATION PAINTING AND SCULPTURE
PRIZE 2015 SHORTLISTED ARTISTS
Queenie Clark
queenieclarke.com
[email protected]
Daniel Crooks
dancrooks.wix.com/art
[email protected]
Martin Darbyshire
martindarbyshire.com
[email protected]
Jadé Fadojutimi
jadefadojutimi.com
[email protected]
Harry Fletcher
harryjavonfletcher.com
[email protected]
Joshua Fox
artbyjoshfox.weebly.com
Lewis Henderson
lewishenderson.co.uk
[email protected]
Kayt Hughes
kaythughes.co.uk
[email protected]
Mark Mindel
markmindel.com
[email protected]
Emma Papworth
emmapapworth.com
[email protected]
Neena Percy
neenapercy.com
[email protected]
Jacob Watmore
jacobwatmore.com
[email protected]
BALTIC’s project space at BALTIC 39
31-39 High Bridge, Newcastle upon Tyne
baltic39.com