The Converse x Dazed Emerging Artists Award

Interesting exhibition at the Royal Academy for the winners of this prize for unrepresented artists not currently in education. Each winner was awarded £1000 towards the production of new work created for this exhibition.

You walked in to an installation by Jonathon Trayte called “The Shoppers Guide” which was full of facsimiles of food piled high and acting as a commentary on over production of food. They were very real looking and yet as you looked closer the items were in slightly odd colours and giving a look of decay.

To the right of this was a wonderful interactive video installation by Lawrence Lek showing a version of the Royal Academy building repurposed as a high-end estate agent complete with Anish Kapoor sculptures and a helipad! You could navigate your way round it or just let it run. Really fascinating if you know the building well and made you look at the space around you again.

To the far left of the gallery was  another installation by Tamsin Snow and Sarah Tynan representing the idea of the multi-faith rooms growing up in public buildings devoid of any sign or furniture which might be representative of a particular faith. In one corner was a rather spooky blowing curtain which gave the space an ethereal movement somehow adding an unspoken other to the space.

The other two exhibits didn’t really work for me. One by Rachel Pimm was about rubber production and included a pile of rubber which was very smelly and off putting. Sorry I’ve never been able to sleep with a rubber hot water bottle because of the smell. The other was by Patrick Cole but was really a performance piece and if there was no performance (which there wasn’t when I was there) seemed a bit irrelevant.

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