Thursday 20 May 2021

Sir Leslie Joseph Young Artist Award: Kathryn Ashill, Fools Gold Saturday 26 May 2021 - Sunday 27 June 2021 11:00 am - 4:00 pm



FOOLS GOLD, Kathryn Ashill 2021

Fools Gold by Kathryn Ashill is her first exhibition in a public art gallery, and is the result of the Sir Leslie Joseph Young Artist Award, administered by the Friends of Glynn Vivian. The biennial award is open to young artists throughout the UK who have undertaken part of their education in Wales, and offers an excellent opportunity for an emerging artist to have their first solo exhibition in a public gallery.


Fools Gold is a video installation, which explores the artist’s paternal history. Ashill’s father would collect her Iron Pyrites (fools gold) from a surface mine near their home deep in the Tawe Valleys, South Wales. The work moves between this autobiographical narrative and the history of the Louis XIV, nicknamed the Sun King after he danced for courtiers and forced them to worship him, whilst he was dressed head to toe in gold.


Amateur dramatics, the Drag King scene and autobiography are recurring themes in Ashill’s work, which she uses to explore and navigate gender identity.


Funny and playful, Ashill uses the do-it-yourself aesthetics of amateur dramatics to create costumes and ‘sets’ in which she performs as both her father and also as the Sun King. In the exhibition, we enter into a homemade cave created from painted theatre flats drawing us into the central film installation.


The exhibition also includes a new artist book with commissioned art works by Tanad Aaron, Cian Donnelly, Rowan Lear and Fern Thomas.


Kathryn Ashill said ‘Winning the Sir Leslie Joseph Young Artist Award gives me the opportunity to occupy and claim space beyond the live performance. Having been raised in Swansea, the Glynn Vivian has played a significant role in my introduction to contemporary art. Accessing the gallery through education in the late 80’s and early 90’s sparked a lifelong commitment to art-making and becoming an artist. I’ve shown nationally and internationally in a broad-ranging career but exhibiting at the Glynn Vivian is the realisation of a lifelong dream. This is the homecoming of all homecomings!


Selector, Lizzie Lloyd said, “Kathryn’s proposal for the Leslie Joseph Award was fresh, fearless, and downright funny – she has the potential to do something really exciting with Glynn Vivian.”


Kay Renfrew of the Friends of Glynn Vivian said, “The Leslie Joseph Award is a great opportunity to bring a young Welsh artist to a wider audience, and to give them the experience of exhibiting at a prestigious gallery, working with an established exhibition officer and curator. The Friends are delighted to support the prize and we are sure that Kathryn Ashill will create an exciting exhibition.”


Sir Leslie Joseph Young Artist Award

The Award is funded by a generous legacy from the estate of the late Sir Leslie Joseph and is administered by the Friends of the Glynn Vivian Art Gallery. Previous award winners include Daniel Mulloy, James Donovan, Will Nash, Tomas Lewis, Richard Monahan and Heather Phillipson.


Kathryn Ashill – Brief Biography

Kathryn Ashill (born in Swansea, 1983) lives and works in Barry Island. Ashill obtained BA Hons. Fine Art Combined Media at Swansea Metropolitan University (now UWTSD) and holds an MFA from Glasgow School of Art, and has shown both nationally and internationally. Ashill is a current practice based PhD candidate at the University of Manchester, where she is researching the potential of inter species collaboration in both performance art making and bio therapy. This research is funded by the Wellcome Trust.


Selectors Biography

Lizzie Lloyd

Brought up in Swansea, Lizzie Lloyd is an art writer and historian. She lectures in Fine Art and Art and Visual Culture at University of the West of England. Her texts have been commissioned by Plymouth College of Art, Phoenix (Exeter), Hestercombe Gallery (Taunton), UH Galleries (Hatfield). She recently contributed to a Cubitt Education Community Studios project (London). Her writing has appeared in publications including Art Monthly, Journal of Contemporary Painting and artnet. She was writer-in-residence at Arnolfini (2016) and Plymouth (2017). She has just completed her doctoral thesis on Art Writing and Subjectivity at University of Bristol.


Zehra Jumabhoy

 is a UK-based art critic, curator and art historian specialising in modern & contemporary art. She was the Steven and Elena Heinz Scholar at the Courtauld Institute of Art, London, where she completed her doctorate on contemporary Indian art and nationalism and is currently an Associate Lecturer. Her book, The Empire Strikes Back: Indian Art Today, was published by Random House, London, in 2010.


Monday 3 August 2020

Henry Moore Foundation Artists Award Scheme

The Henry Moore Foundation has shown its on-going commitment to the future of sculpture with the announcement of its new Artist Award Scheme. As a response to the pressures brought about by the current Covid-19 pandemic, the Foundation has allocated more than £60,000 of funding and resources to directly assist 40 artists at a time when other sources of income might no longer be available.
“Coming out of maternity leave into a pandemic has meant little headspace for creative thinking or strategising for the future. This award helps me carve out time and space to tend to my practice or funds to work collaboratively in a time of isolation.”
Glasgow-born artist Jasleen Kaur
The artists from across the UK, including Anna Berry, Appau Jnr Boakye-Yiadom and Jasleen Kaur, were nominated from a panel of 20 prominent figures in the sector including Beth Bate, Director at Dundee Contemporary Arts; Jo Verrent, Senior Producer at Unlimited; and Zoe Whitley, Director at Chisenhale Gallery, London.
“Receiving this award from the Henry Moore Foundation’s Artist Award Scheme is something I appreciate greatly for several reasons. Not least is the financial help, desperately needed at this time. But also, being a self-taught outsider artist, to even be on the radar for something like this means a very great deal.”
Milton Keynes-based artist Anna Berry
This award will help to support artists in the continuing development of the valuable work they do, following a difficult period where many have lost work due to the cancellation and postponement of exhibitions and a halt on new commissions due to the Coronavirus pandemic. The fund is unrestricted, allowing artists the flexibility to use funds however they need to, whether that’s paying studio rent, buying materials or reimbursing the funds for work lost.
“This is an incredibly difficult moment for the arts and especially so for many artists who lost much of their income-earning work almost immediately. Sadly, we will see the impact of the pandemic on our industry for a long time to come. Henry Moore himself benefitted from an ex-serviceman’s grant after he fought in World War 1, which enabled him to study sculpture at Leeds College of Art. With this in mind, the Foundation wanted to offer timely support and give artists across the country some much-needed assistance.”
Godfrey Worsdale, Director of the Henry Moore Foundation
Moore’s appreciation of the support he received stayed with him throughout his life and was instrumental in his decision to establish his Foundation to give support back to the study and future development of the visual arts and sculpture in particular. One of the first of its kind, the Henry Moore Foundation was created by the artist and his family in 1977 to encourage public appreciation of the visual arts. Today it supports innovative sculpture projects around the world, devises an imaginative programme of exhibitions and research, and preserves the legacy of Moore himself: widely recognised as one of the great sculptors of the 20th century.
To date the Foundation has awarded grants of £35million to galleries, exhibitions and emerging artists worldwide.

About Henry Moore Foundation Grants

Henry Moore Grants awards £500,000 annually and in doing so seeks to continue Moore's legacy by supporting sculpture across historical, modern and contemporary registers and funding research that expands the appreciation of sculpture. Applications are assessed four times during the year by the Grants Committee.
The first grant was awarded following the inaugural Henry Moore Foundation committee meeting on 26 January, 1977, when it was agreed to give £25,000 to advance the British Museum’s Egyptian sculpture gallery project. Since then the programme has supported international excellence and ambition in the field of sculpture in many ways.

List of Artists

Aaron McPeake
Alberta Whittle
Alex Frost
Alexander Duncan
Anna Berry
Anne Vibeke Mou
Appau Jnr Boakye-Yiadom
Ashley Holmes
Becky Beasley
Charlotte Dawson
David Kefford
Dominique White
Emily Hesse
Flora Parrott
Hetain Patel
James Clarkson
Jasleen Kaur
Jill McKnight
Joanne Masding
Kathryn Ashill
Katie Schwab
Leo Fitzmaurice
Liam Fallon
Lilah Fowler
Lindsey Mendick
Louise Barrington
Madeleine Pledge
Nick Gordon
Nicola Ellis
Phoebe Collings-James
Rachal Bradley
Simeon Barclay
Stuart Whipps
and other artists who wish to remain anonymous