Dentons Art Prize 9.0 January – June 2020 cover image: Alasdair Gordon, All the Tape Left Over From My Last Painting, 2019 About the Dentons Art Prize Dentons is collaborating with curator of booklets, artist talks and events. Centre for Contemporary Art) and art Niamh White and artist Tim A Shaw As part of the initiative, the shortlisted historian Rebecca Daniels. to host a biannual prize for the most artists are given access to expert pro exciting emerging contemporary bono legal advice and their artwork Previous winners of the Dentons Art artists working today. The shortlisted is offered for sale. Prize include Caroline Jane Harris, artists exhibit their artwork in Liqing Tan, Cherelle Sappleton, Dentons’ meeting rooms and offices The Dentons Art Prize is a £5,000 Katharine Lazenby, Alzbeta Jaresova, at One Fleet Place, London, providing award that is given to one artist Paresha Amin, Alexandra Lethbridge a stimulating and vibrant environment biannually by an independent jury and Aimee Parrott. for Dentons’ staff, clients and of top art world professionals. Our partners. Dentons is committed to previous panels have included high Staff Prize supporting promising artists as they profile artists Mark Wallinger, Richard progress in their careers and values Wentworth, Mark Titchner, Susan In conjunction with this award, the vibrant and responsive insights Hiller and Michael Landy, gallerists Dentons also celebrates one artist on both local and global culture that Neil Wenman, Simon Lee, Hannah with the “Staff Prize”. This will be they provide. The initiative gives the Barry and Maureen Paley, collectors awarded to the most popular artist Dentons community the opportunity David Roberts and Valeria Napoleone, as voted by Dentons’ London to engage with the artworks in curators Ziba Ardalan (Parasol Unit) employees. a meaningful way through a series and Natasha Hoare (Goldsmiths “ Exciting cities remind you how very different spaces can be at different times of day and how they can be put to a diversity of uses. What fun if walls had ears. I found it so compelling to be in Dentons’ offices one evening and imagine a week’s footfall and debate, whilst realising that so much ambitious art had been both a foil and a witness. What a great scheme this is, what a great conversation for all the participants to find themselves as players…” — Richard Wentworth, Artist Judge of the Dentons Art Prize “ The Dentons Art Prize has been an incredible and transformative experience for me.” — Cherelle Sappleton, Artist Former Prize Winner 4 Dentons Art Prize 9.0 Shortlist Alastair Gordon 6 Alexander Stavrou 12 Amanda Denny 19 Anna Freeman Bentley 29 Daniel Pettitt 35 Josh Rowell 42 Osian Jenaer 46 Simone Mudde 48 Xiuching Tsay 51 Morris 56 Margaux Derhy 64 All enquiries and feedback on the Dentons Art Prize to: [email protected] 5 Alastair Gordon At first, these are paintings about of paper: materials to be utilised by their display. And yet, despite painting: images that oscillate at the very beginning or discarded their whimsical irony and scrupulous between artifice and artifact. at the end of the painting process. attention to detail, the historical Alasdair Gordon’s paintings Certain questions emerge about the veracity of these objects are in strongly reference a form of trompe processes of painting, of illusion, constant doubt. l’oeil painting that proliferated representation and how artists in the seventeenth century in utilise their source materials. The Gordon is a London based artist Northern Europe: a specific form notion of authenticity is central to and curator. He has had recent of illusionism called rack painting. Gordon’s artistic enquiry. As Jean solo exhibitions at the Ahmanson From here he paints an array of Baudrillard wrote in The System Gallery (Los Angeles), First Things selected objects to appear as of Objects: “We are fascinated by Gallery (New York), Nunnery Gallery ‘pinned’ or ‘taped’ in low relief on what has been created... because (London) and Nomas* Projects a wooden surface. Objects are the moment of creation cannot be (Dundee) with group shows often chosen for their residual reproduced.” The viewer is often this year in Beijing, Melbourne value in the artist’s studio such as disarmed by the meticulous nature and London. Work features in masking tape left over from the of their representation and the various international and museum painting process or a blank piece sense of authority communicated collections including the Beth de 6 Rudin Woody Collection, Ahmanson (hons) at the Glasgow School of Art Collection, Royal Bank of Scotland in 2002 then an MA in 2012 from and Simmons and Simmons. Wimbledon School of Art. He went Gordon is currently course leader on the establish Husk Gallery for Professional Practice at the in East London and developed Leith School of Art in Edinburgh. a programme of exhibitions He is artist-in-residence for PADA featuring graduate London artists Studios in Lisbon and has just and political refugees from across completed a six month project as Europe. This led to the foundation artist-in-residence for the City and of Morphē Arts, a mentoring charity Guilds of London Art School. He for emerging artists of which he is has received several prizes for his a founding director. painting, not least the Shoesmiths Art Prize in 2017 and two of his paintings were selected this year for the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition. Alastair completed his BA 7 Alasdair Gordon The Old That is Strong Does Not Wither, 2017 Oil on birch 50 x 40 cm £2,700 Location: Corridor near Room 19 8 Alasdair Gordon All the Tape Left Over From My Last Painting, 2019 Oil on wood 50 x 40 cm £2,700 Location: Room 21 9 Alasdair Gordon Remains of the Day, 2019 Oil on canvas Four panels reconfigured to 120 x 120 cm £6,700 Location: Corridor near Room 18 10 Alasdair Gordon It Can Exist, In and For Itself, Without Things, 2017 Oil on wood 50 x 40 cm £2,700 Location: Corridor near Room 19 Alasdair Gordon Remains of the Day, 2019 Oil on canvas Four panels reconfigured to 120 x 120 cm £6,700 Location: Corridor near Room 18 11 Alexander Stavrou Through pictorial and painterly a product of working something out London. While on The Hive Residency expression, Alexander Stavrou’s works which emerges from a non-verbal at the Koppel Project in 2018, inquire into variants within systems, material based language. Stavrou was able to challenge his in particular natural process and approach to the art object by making the understanding of it. He regards Stavrou graduated from City an installation comprised of both matter as physical information which & Guilds of London Art School in paintings and moving image titled has agency and the possibility of 2012 with a First Class Honours BA ‘Counterparts at Play’. In September being manipulated. In light of this, Degree in Fine Art and was awarded 2019, he curated a group show he considers paint to be inherently the Chadwyck-Healey Prize for exploring the materiality of the chaotic with the potential to become painting. Since then he has exhibited art object in an ever increasing ordered. Each painting is often in a number of group shows in digital age. Alexander Stavrou ‘Here’ and ‘Not Here’, 2017 Oil on canvas 24 x 24 cm £1,400 Location: Room 8 12 13 Alexander Stavrou Sink, 2018 Oil on carved wood 25 x 23 cm £1,200 Location: Room 8 14 Alexander Stavrou Block II, 2019 Oil on carved wood 26 x 20 cm £1,000 Location: Room 7 15 Alexander Stavrou Packet, 2018 Oil on carved wood 26 x 20 cm £1,000 Location: Room 7 16 Alexander Stavrou Kernel, 2019 Oil on wood 20 x 20 cm £1,000 Location: Corridor near Room 7 17 Alexander Stavrou M81, 2018 Oil on wood 21 x 28 cm £1,000 Location: Room 7 18 Amanda Denny Amanda Denny is a London based and the development of photo-text long-awaited closure – the final photographic artist and visual are core to her practice. act. The book considers a women’s storyteller who works increasingly place in the world, mental resilience, with imagery, literature and archival Denny is exhibiting two bodies the imbrication of time and chance material, using both analogue and of work as part of the Dentons encounters that alter the paths you digital image making processes. Art Prize. Bitter Revenge, 2019 is travel on. This Victorian woman Her practice explores our mental a photo-book which takes the form came onto the shelf of Denny’s spaces, including issues of urban of a three act play, and is driven life, igniting old memories by living, solitude versus loneliness, by two narrative threads set some frequent coincidental connections: memory, social stigmas and 100 years apart with heartbreak, places, the Sussex police, failed conflicts of choice. Alongside this, unstable relationships and rejection romance and its cognitive effects. she introduces the imbrication of at their core. One of these is Using archival material, personal time and chance happenings and a Victorian woman, Christiana documents, literature and still life the paths we can end up on for Edmunds, who became known as imagery, Bitter Revenge delves such occurrences. She produces the ‘Chocolate Cream Killer’ and into themes of loneliness, fear narrative spaces that enable her to ‘Venus of Broadmoor’, the other is of abandonment, social stigmas, respond to everyday life and the her own. From the weaving of these mental health and memory. social environment. The photo book two narratives a third emerges, a 19 The second project is titled No personal identity and belonging. France 4th Edition, City to Sea Place Like Home and was shot over The medium used enabled a varied Coney Island* 2018, Wall Ortiz a period of three months using response to a repetitive visual Gallery, NY, 2018, Safehouse 1, 139 Polaroid and instant film cameras, landscape very familiar to the artist Copeland Road, London, SE15 3SN chosen for their unpredictable, and reflected the out of place and many more.