The six recipients of the annual £10,000 Arts Foundation Fellowships were announced last night Thursday 23 January at the organisation’s award ceremony in London.
Winner in the Sculpture category was 2010 Royal College of Art graduate Leah Capaldi, whose practice spans performance and sculpture to explore issues around culture, power and self-perception. Capaldi was selected by judges Robin Klassnik of Matt’s Gallery and artists Cornelia Parker and Andrew Sabin. The other shortlisted artists, who each receive £1,000, were Peles Empire, Serena Korda and Sara MacKillop.
Glasgow-based Andrew Cranston, was the recipient of the Painting category award. His work uses ‘fiction as his source material’ taking inspiration from characters and scenarios in literature, theatre and cinema to explore interior architectural spaces. Judges in the Painting category were artists David Batchelor and Michael Raedecker and gallerist Sadie Coles; the other shortlisted artists were Neal Jones, Yelena Popova and Selma Parlour.
Established in 1991 with an anonymous bequest of £1million, the Arts Foundation exists to support individual artists across the fields of fine and performing arts, literature, craft and new media. Its Fellowship Scheme offers support to emerging artists ‘on the basis of both talent and need’ at a point when a period of relative financial security may be crucial to the development of their practice.
Other 2014 winners were Alice Birch (Playwriting), Isobel Harbison (Arts Journalism), Julia Lohmann (Materials Innovation), and Rie Nakajima (Experimental Music).
