Daiwa Prize shortlist announced

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The Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation has announced an exhibition of work by the three artists shortlisted for the Daiwa Foundation Art Prize 2015:Oliver Beer, Julie Brook and Mikhail Karikis. The artists will exhibit their finished projects at Daiwa Foundation Japan House from 12 June–17 July 2015.

One of the three shortlisted artists will be invited to exhibit at the Aoyama | Meguro Gallery in Tokyo in Autumn 2015. In addition, he or she will be awarded a participation fee of £5000, and a period of support and introduction to key individuals and organisations in the Japanese contemporary art world.

The Daiwa Foundation Art Prize 2015 will be presented to the overall winner at a private awards ceremony on 11June, by a distinguished panel: Hideki Aoyama, Gallery Director, Aoyama | Meguro Gallery, Tokyo; Richard Deacon, Turner Prize-winning artist; Mami Kataoka, Chief Curator, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo; Chris Orr RA, artist; and Jonathan Watkins, Director of Ikon Gallery, Birmingham.

Oliver Beer’s body of work interrogates the physical properties and sentimental values of material objects and cultural narratives. In doing so, he casts doubt on the objectivity of perception. In this show, Oliver will exhibit a series ofpowerfully illusory wall installations, in which ‘dissected’ objects, halved long-ways, are embedded in plaster plaques that lie flush with the wall.Among the series will be a work with coloured pencils, RGB (2014), which links directly to his main exhibit, a video entitled Reanimation – Snow White (2014). Never before shown in the UK, this film loop is a kaleidoscopic assemblage of over 500 images, hand-coloured by French schoolchildren, reimagining a sequence from Walt Disney’s 1938 cartoon. With a soundtrack pieced together from archived recordings of the film’s original songs, this film calls upon the universal mythology of Snow White to express the power of the collective imagination.

Julie Brook will be showing new films and drawing exploring her most recent sculptural work made in the semi-desert of North West Namibia, leading on from her ‘MADE, UNMADE’series. Lying at the heart of this project is the artist’s desire to explore the tactile, tangible essence of her surroundings in as physical a way as possible. Transposing these often-huge ephemeral works, made from the fabric of the landscape itself, into the interior spaces of a gallery has proved an exciting challenge for the artist. At this exhibition, a double-screen screening will immerse the viewer in the sounds, rhythms and sights of the sparsely populated Namibian landscape. Footage of local Himba assisting her on her projects is interspersed with poetic sequences showing the magical, transformative effect of light on her sculptures. Her films become the work itself, just as her physical drawings crystallize her on-site observations.

In collaboration with different working communities, Mikhail Karikis explores the human voice as a sculptural material and a sociopolitical agent. He challenges the mainstream and foregrounds subcultures that present alternative models of human existence, action and production. For the show, he will show his recent project Children of Unquiet (2014), which orchestrates a children’s ‘take-over’ of an abandoned workers’ village and its adjacent industrial and natural locations, embracing sound, video and performance in an immersive audio-visual installation. Their ‘take-over’ through play, song and their own interventions, generate the opportunity for individual and communal expression, asserting the younger generation’s connection with the site of their childhood.In common with Oliver Beer, Mikhail plays with the absorptive qualities of music, and his vocal compositions have featured on tracks by Bjork and DJ Spooky.

This will be the third exhibition of the Daiwa Foundation Art Prize, an award offered to British artists resident in the UK who have not previously exhibited in Japan. The two previous Prizes were awarded in 2009 to Marcus Coates, who had a solo exhibition at Tomio Koyama Gallery, Tokyo, and in 2012 to Haroon Mirza, whose solo show was held at SCAI THE BATHHOUSE, Tokyo.

Exhibition dates: 12 June – 17 July.

The Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation
Daiwa Foundation Japan House,
13/14 Cornwall Terrace (Outer Circle)
London NW1 4QP
Mon – Fri, 9.30a.m. – 5.00p.m.

About the artists

Oliver Beer was born in 1985 in the United Kingdom. He studied composition before attending the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, University of Oxford. Oliver Beer's work has been the subject of many screenings as well as solo and group exhibitions, notably at the Centre Pompidou, Paris; Ikon Gallery, Birmingham; WIELS, Brussels; Museum of Contemporary Art MAC Lyon; Modern Art Oxford; Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Paris; the Palais de Tokyo and the Lyon Biennale; the Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris; and MoMA PS1, New York.

Mikhail Karikis is a London-based artist. He studied at The Slade School (UCL) and the Bartlett (UCL). Karikis’s works have been exhibited in museums and international biennials including the 19th Biennale of Sydney, AU (2014); Listening, Hayward Touring Exhibition, UK (2014-2015); Mediacity Seoul/SeMA Biennale, Seoul, KR (2014); Inside, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, FR (2014); Assembly, Tate Britain, London, UK (2014); Aquatopia, TATE St Ives & Nottingham Contemporary, UK (2013-2014). Solo exhibitions include Children of Unquiet, Villa Romana, Florence, IT (2014); SeaWomen, Arnolfini, Bristol, UK (2013).

Julie Brook is a British artist who for 25 years has roamed, lived and sculpted in a succession of uninhabited and remote landscapes.From the black volcanic desert of central Libya and in the Jebel Acacus mountains in South West Libya (2008/2009) to the semi-desert of NW Namibia (2011/2012/2014), the nature of light, shadow and structure are expressed in the sculptural forms Brook makes. Her most recent solo exhibition series, MADE, UNMADE, features multi-screen film installations which are adapted for specific locations (Dovecot Studios in Edinburgh, The Wapping Project in London, and Little Buckland Gallery). A sculptural work relating to this project was also commissioned by Shetland Arts for the grounds of Bonhoga Gallery in 2013.

The Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation is a UK charity, established in 1988 with the generous support of Daiwa Securities Co Ltd. Its purpose is to support closer links between Britain and Japan in all fields of activity, including the visual arts.

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