The winner of the 2018 Shape Arts’ Adam Reynolds Memorial Bursary is the London-based sculptor Terence Birch. He will receive a £10,000 bursary plus a three month residency, to be undertaken at Pallant House Gallery and the University of Chichester early next year.
Birch, who is a graduate of the Royal College of Art and Goldsmiths College, creates assemblages from a variety of different materials and media that explore class structure and consumer desire.
He was previously artist in residence with the Stephen Lawrence Gallery during the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. Group exhibitions have included Bloomberg New Contemporaries in 2006, plus ‘Chalmers Bequest’, which was a project by Turner Prize winner Elizabeth Price at the Mildmay Club, London.
Explaining the impact the award will have, Birch said: “It will enable me the security and peace to express myself in a community that encourages individuality, personal responsibility and independence. This is a much needed bursary that believes in people’s potential and provides a chance for disabled artists, such as myself, to dream of a future with love and hope – amid the barriers.”
Birch was selected from a shortlist featuring five other artists: Sarah Carpenter, Catherine Cleary, Jesse Darling, Nicola Lane and Rebecca Lennon.
The selection panel were: Fiona Slater, programme coordinator at Shape Arts; Simon Martin, director of Pallant House Gallery; Steve McDade, head of fine art at the University of Chichester, and John Gill, chair of Camden Arts Centre.
McDade said Birch will have an important role to play within the University of Chichester’s art department: “His intriguing use of materials and lateral thinking approach to concepts will bring a stimulating dialogue and interaction with the students across the department, and the wider community through Pallant House Gallery.”
Shape Arts is a disability-led arts organisation that works to improve access to culture for disabled people by providing opportunities for disabled artists. It also trains cultural institutions to be more open to disabled people through running participatory arts and development programmes.
The bursary was set up in memory of the sculptor Adam Reynolds. The aim is to provide an opportunity for mid-career disabled artists to develop their ideas and practice without pressure to deliver a particular outcome, such as finished or exhibition-ready work
The recipient of the last Adam Reynolds Memorial Bursary was sculptor Oliver MacDonald, whose three month residency at Turner Contemporary took place earlier this year. Previous residencies have been hosted by the V&A, the New Art Gallery Walsall, Camden Arts Centre, Baltic and Spike Island.
For more information on the Adam Reynolds Memorial Bursary visit: www.shapearts.org.uk
Images:
1. Terence Birch, Virtuous Circle, 2010. Courtesy: Shape Arts
2. Terence Birch, Portrait of the Artist (after Degas), 2005. Courtesy: Shape Arts
3. Terence Birch, Stains of a Sickening, Sexy, Spectre, 2005. Courtesy: Shape Arts
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