INTRODUCTION


Now in its sixth year, the Midas Award is an initiative between Midas Construction, Newlyn Art Gallery & The Exchange, Millennium and UCF to help emerging artists enter the professional contemporary art world, while providing opportunities for their work to be seen by audiences within the region and beyond. 
 
The Midas Award 2011 is an exhibition of six BA(Hons) Fine Art graduates from University College Falmouth (UCF).  The artists were shortlisted in June for this year’s Midas Award, the winner of which was announced at the Millennium Gallery on Friday 11 November at the private view.

The shortlisted artists are: Alastair Barford; Susan Clarke; Clare Flawn; Andrew Gomez; Zoe Koperski; and Emily Platzer

The Winner of The Midas Award 2011 will receive a year’s supply of art materials and access to facilities to the value of £1500 and a solo show at Newlyn Art Gallery in the autumn of 2012, providing another rare chance for a new artist to present work in a high profile professional venue.


The judges were: Martin Walton, Business Development Manager and Keith Hosen,
Project Director from Midas Construction; Joseph Clarke, Director of Millennium Gallery, St Ives; James Green,  Director, and Blair Todd, Director and Exhibitions Manager, Newlyn Art Gallery & The Exchange; Sara Black, Director, ProjectBase; and Jeremy Diggle, Dean of the School of Art & Design, UCF.

ARTIST PROFILES





ALASTAIR BARFORD (WINNER OF THE MIDAS AWARD 2011)

My work explores the ways in which information is communicated. I often work from appropriated media imagery in order to explore the complex relationship between representation and reality. Treating the media image as primary source material, focus, depth of field, motion-blur and multiple-exposure are as much part of my subject matter as the people and events, which my paintings ostensibly portray.






SUSAN CLARKE

My work primarily is informed by the themes of mortality and ritual within the death of animals, in particular road kill. What interests me is people's levels of perception of death.  As humans we have an almost blatant disregard for road kill animals and care very little for the loss of their lives. I aim to challenge people's reactions and perceptions of road kill. I want people to see the beauty with their form, the delicacy and intricacies. I want my audience to have a sense of appreciation of life.






CLARE FLAWN

I am driven by the spaces that have contained me and held me present. The changing of the light and how it manoeuvres through its surroundings shapes these spaces. The objects I introduce to these settings are often remnants of a former whole, a singular trace of a greater history. They allude to time passed, as does the varying light that moves around them. The light's weight, its solidity or briefness, informs the tone of my paintings.






ANDREW GOMEZ

Dynamic Action Portraiture (DAP) is an artwork that has had a significant bearing on the recent development of my studio work. It consists of an interactive drawing board, which I use to make portraits of people. The arrangement is such that the sitter, using a footswitch, controls the movement of the paper around the board; thus, they are able to observe the creation whilst having the power to disrupt their own portrait by pressing the footswitch at anytime. There exists an interaction and reciprocity: the artist, subject and drawing are interdependent.

ZOE KOPERSKI

My practice focuses on analysing modern culture and spirituality in contemporary society though the use of subversion, humour and irony. My influences come from reflections about the society we live in, both socially and politically, and focuses in on things that are often overlooked rather than questioned. I use everyday objects and recreate them with a tongue in cheek and ironic twist, by making intricately embellished votives for modern society, updating traditional objects with contemporary images that contradict the preconceived ideas that come with them.

EMILY PLATZER

My paintings aim to engage with the materiality of paint and its ability to represent and find the moment in-between, appealing to the faculties of memory and sensation. I am addressing both the viewer's visual consciousness and the painter's dilemmas during the act of painting. The paintings are indefinite and strange; splodges, veils and blocks are made with paint, alluding to or masking the description of something familiar.