Image: Performance #2, video still, Karin Kihlberg & Reuben Henry
aspex announces the winner of its biennial open submission competition
EMERGENCY4
Runs until 24 January 2010
From almost six hundred applications and 2,500 individual works of art, the selectors of Emergency4 shortlisted nine artists who are currently appearing in a group show at aspex until 24 January 2010.
The selection panel - David Blandy, artist; Deborah Smith, freelance curator; Michael Stanley, Director of Modern Art Oxford; and Joanne Bushnell, Director of aspex - were charged with the difficult decision of awarding one of the artists the prize of a solo show at aspex in 2011.
It is with great excitement that aspex announces Karin Kihlberg and Reuben Henry as the winners of the Emergency4 prize.
Joanne Bushnell, chair of the selection panel said:
“The panel’s decision was unanimous. Selection of this type of exhibition can at times be a grueling process for all involved, but Karin Kihlberg and Reuben Henry’s work stopped us in our tracks, it stood out as excellent, intelligent and funny.”
Karin Kihlberg and Reuben Henry investigate ways in which art, cinema and live events are consumed by contemporary audiences and reconsiders the conventional modes of production and presentation which regulate such encounters.
Among their intentions is a desire to jettison realism and documentary truth in exchange for exaggeration and fiction, in order to incite situations and representations that come closer to a representation of the live.
Kihlberg and Henry began collaborating in 2004. They graduated from the University of Central England with BA (Hons) Fine Art in 2002 & 2001 respectively, and are based in Birmingham, UK and Maastricht, Netherlands.
EMERGENCY4 includes the work of Chloe Brooks, Katie Davies, Glad Fryer, Karin Kihlberg & Reuben Henry, Charlotte C Mortensson, Femmy Otten, Katie Pratt, Jack Southern & Eunju Yoo.
It is an essential part of the aspex’s programme, providing emerging artists with an opp
ortunity to bring their work to wider attention. The initiative is organised in partnership with arc, aspex’s artists’ resource centre.
EDITORS’ NOTES:
EMERGENCY4continues the programme of intriguing and lively exhibitions and projects at aspex, Portsmouth’s leading contemporary art gallery. Founded in 1981, aspex moved into new premises in the Vulcan Building on the waterfront at Gunwharf Quays in December 2006. The transformation of this disused naval storehouse into a bright and inviting arts space, combines the best of the old and the new, and won a Royal Institute of British Architects award in 2007.
The exhibition is open 11am – 4pm daily, admission is FREE.
To arrange interviews, press trips, more press information and visuals, please contact Clive Caswell, Exhibitions Co-ordinator on 023 9277 8080 or clive@aspex.org.uk
aspex, The Vulcan Building, Gunwharf Quays, Portsmouth, PO1 3BF
t: 023 9277 8080, e: info@aspex.org.uk, www.aspex.org.uk
aspex is supported by Arts Council England South East, Portsmouth City Council and is part funded by the European Union.
