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THE CURATED SPACE

FOREWORD

This year the Threadneedle Prize enters a new era, building on its success since inception in 2008. The Prize began as a collaboration between Threadneedle Investments, a leading international investment manager, and Mall Galleries, and it continues to grow ever stronger. For the first time this year, the winner will be awarded a solo show at Mall Galleries, an incredible opportunity to showcase work in the heart of London. Along with a cash award of £20,000, The Threadneedle Prize remains one of the most valuable art prizes in the UK.

Figurative art has always been at the forefront of our Prize, and we wanted to evolve that emphasis even further. Chosen by a selection panel of industry leaders, we are delighted that this year’s exhibition features a broad range of talented emerging and established artists, working within the realms of figurative art in the UK and Europe.

This year sees the inauguration of a curated section which will provide a platform to demonstrate the importance of figurative art in

contemporary practice. In introducing the ‘Curated Space’, we have sought to complement and enhance the already well-established open entry competition. Our first Guest Curator, Sacha Craddock, has brought great insight and personality to the exhibition. Sacha’s selection brings together artists and works across a range of experience, backgrounds and training, all of which demonstrate the evolving nature of figurative art in the wider context of the contemporary visual art world.

Over the past year, The Threadneedle Foundation has continued to grow our commitment to investing in the community, and our partnership with Mall Galleries reflects this. Another example is our partnership with The Art Room, a national charity that supports 5-16 year olds who are experiencing emotional and behavioural difficulties. Earlier in the year we worked with The Art Room and Mall Galleries to present Face Time, a fundraising exhibition that brought together over 60 works of art by leading international artists raising more than £65,000 for The Art Room.

I would like to thank everyone involved in The Threadneedle Prize this year: our panellists, who dedicated many hours debating the selection and provided an invigorated insight into the current figurative landscape; the artists and their thousands of entries; Sacha Craddock and the artists who loaned their work to the curated section; and finally, to Mall Galleries. We hope that The Threadneedle Prize 2014, including the Curated Space, will provide you with the perfect opportunity to experience and discuss Figurative Art Today.

Campbell FlemingChief Executive Officer,

Threadneedle Investments

THE SELECTORS

Kevin Francis Gray

Kevin Francis Gray’s work uses the neoclassical style of sculpture to produce images of contemporary urban life. Hoodies and trainers are carved in marble and bronze.

“His work addresses the complex relationship between abstraction and figuration and aims to transcend the natural and the material in both form and subject matter, seeking to render a physical perfection that is not reached in the temporal world. This tension between the real and unreal lends itself to a worthwhile questioning of contemporary definitions of tradition and innovation.” Pace Gallery, London

John Martin

John Martin is Director of John Martin Gallery, with two gallery spaces in Central London. He is also Founder and Director of Art Dubai and Adviser for International Art Projects. In 2007 he founded the Middle East’s first contemporary art fair, Art Dubai, for which he was Fair Director for four years until 2010.

During this period he initiated the Global Art Forum, the Abraaj Capital Art Prize and Contemparabia, a cultural itinerary aimed at international museum groups, collectors and the press.

Whitney Hintz

Whitney Hintz is an independent advisor and Curator of the Hiscox Collection. The Hiscox Collection comprises approximately 600 works on display across the company’s 30 offices in the UK, Europe and USA.

In addition to overseeing the Hiscox Collection and advising private clients, Whitney is a board member of the Crossrail Arts Programme and ‘Sculpture in the City’, an annual outdoor public sculpture exhibition located within the City’s Square Mile. She is also a consultant for both the Kenneth Armitage Foundation and the Eduardo Paolozzi Foundation.

Nancy Durrant

Nancy Durrant is Arts Commissioning Editor and an Art Critic at The Times, where she has been for 11 years. She has appeared as a commentator on documentaries and Channel 4 News and has presented several films for BBC’s The Culture Show.

She has served on the judging panel of various art prizes, including the New Sensations Prize at the Saatchi Gallery, the Converse/Dazed Emerging Artist Award in association with the Whitechapel Gallery and the Zoo Art Fair prize. She spends her life in museums, art galleries, theatres, cinemas and on buses.

Sue Williams A’CourtThomas AllenClaire Rebecca AnscombSarah BallAngela BellJames BlandGill ButtonCharlie Calder-PottsDea CampbellNicholas CheesemanPaul DashJack DavisGraham DeanJudith DobieSam Douglas Fantich & Young Kate GilesAlastair GordonBuster GrimesRaoof HaghighiSusie HamiltonLee HardmanNiki HareTina Jenkins Ben JohnsonMichael JohnsonGareth KempCarol Anderson Knight

Sarah Knill-JonesGala KnorrUrsula LeachRose LongPablo Garcia MartinezAlan McGowanKim MeredewMichael Sydney MooreMorwenna MorrisonSuzy MurphyShanti PanchalFreya PayneBarbara PoldermanClaire PriceKeith RobertsGill Rocca Erin Sevink-Johnston Sarah Shaw Laura Smith James TailorDavid Teager-PortmanTomas Tichy Anika Tunstall Marijke VaseyTom Jean Webb Paul WhiteCraig Wylie

EXHIBITING ARTISTS

THE SHORTLISTED WORKS

Sue Williams A’Court Anonymous 2Graphite and paint on old book cover30 x 21 cm£550

Thomas AllenThe Net

Charcoal and sanguine150 x 240 cm

£2,000

Sarah BallSkin Painting QuadriptychOil18 x 58 cm£4,800

Tina Jenkins Bed Head

Gloss paint and acrylic on plastic sheeting170 x 170 x 8 cm

£3,950

David Teager-Portman Choosing the Losing Side, The Last ExplorerBronze, plaster, shellac and pigment 120 x 190 x 150 cm£3,500

Craig Wylie EW(hood)

Oil on linen183 x 134 cm

£25,000

Claire Rebecca Anscomb EncasedGraphite

35 x 28 cm£500

THE SELECTED WORKS

Sarah BallPrisoners DiptychOil18 x 29 cm£2,200

Angela Bell Frank

Oil on gesso board18 x 13 cm

£325

Angela Bell Margie and the MelonsOil on gesso board15 x 15 cm£325

James Bland The Ghost

Oil on canvas90 x 100 cm

£2,600

Gill Button Beard 12Oil on board32 x 26 cm £400

Gill Button Ricki

Ink on paper32 x 26 cm

£390

Charlie Calder-Potts And Through the Silence Beat the BellsMixed media on scrap armoured metal from Afghanistan, Helmand Province23 x 38 cm £1,800

Charlie Calder-Potts Come Down and Sit in the Dust

Mixed media on armoured plate from warthog vehicle (Afghanistan) 25 x 20 cm

£1,400

Dea Campbell Leaving the ChurchOil on canvas120 x 90 cm £2,200

Nicholas Cheeseman Material Junctures

Unfired clay and found wood60 x 20 x 20 cm

£3,000

Paul Dash The FloatPen and ink95 x 59 cm £1,700

Jack Davis Pendennis Point Through The Rain

Oil and enamel on aluminium100 x 100 cm

£3,950

Graham Dean Boundary Beach IWatercolour and mixed media118 x 134 cm£12,000

Judith Dobie Thoughtful Man

Collage and watercolour34 x 25 cm

£500

Sam Douglas Brigus SouthOil on board31 x 20 cm£1,450

Fantich & Young Apex Predator | Alpha Scent

Glass flask, teeth, human hair, and scent36 x 20 x 20 cm

£3,000

Kate Giles Back Towards Overy Marshes, NorfolkOil on board17 x 22 cm£1,900

Kate Giles Plough I (Towards Scolt Head, Norfolk)

Oil on board18 x 23 cm

£1,900

Alastair Gordon Sacrament VIOil on wood50 x 40 cm£490

Alastair Gordon Vibac: Perimeter / Red, White And Blue

Oil on wood50 x 40 cm

£490

Buster Grimes Blind & NakedAcrylic40 x 30 cm£875

Raoof Haghighi Golden Frame

Oil on canvas board25 x 34 cm

£4,750

Susie Hamilton Morne DiablotinOil on canvas76 x 61 cm £2,000

Lee Hardman Figure Baring

Oil on linen100 x 80 cm

£2,800

Lee HardmanPosed FigureOil on linen120 x 100 cm£3,200

Niki Hare Mountain Box Shard

Mixed media on print25 x 17 cm

£850

Ben Johnson Room of the RevolutionaryAcrylic on linen150 x 225 cm £72,000

Michael JohnsonWild Life

Acrylic on paper68 x 88 cm

£2,500

Gareth KempTropic of CapricornAcrylic on canvas40 x 40 cm£750

Carol Anderson Knight Mirage

Oil on linen200 x 185 cm

£7,500

Sarah Knill-Jones The Disappearing WomanOil on digital print10 x 15 cm£375

Gala Knörr Debaser

Phototransfer and oil on canvas20 x 30 cm

£400

Ursula Leach Celtic Cross IIOil on canvas60 x 80 cm£1,700

Rose Long Villa Savoye, Poissy, France

Acrylic on linen60 x 95 cm

£2,250

Pablo Garcia Martinez Annotation 2Pen on post-note7 x 7 cm£400

Alan McGowanAlisdair

Bronze (Edition of 5)43 x 28 x 34 cm

£3,500

Kim Meredew Beckett and BerniniMarble and granite (chair), slate and limestone231 x 141 x 60 cm£24,000

Michael Sydney Moore Untitled 13

Oil120 x 90 cm

£4,500

Morwenna Morrison Cultural Interventions IOil on canvas110 x 130 cm£4,000

Suzy Murphy The Appearance of Things

Oil on canvas122 x 153 cm

£10,000

Shanti Panchal The BladeWatercolour122 x 97 cm £15,000

Freya Payne After the Dressing Up III, 2014

Oil on wood panel42 x 40 cm

£5,000

Barbara Polderman The ConductorMixed media150 x 140 x 50 cm£6,000

Claire Price White ClothInk on paper57 x 38 cm

£500

Keith RobertsCauchy Horizon IAcrylic and mixed media on paper84 x 59 cm£1,000

Keith Roberts Wash Horizon

Acrylic and mixed media on paper60 x 84 cm

£1,000

Gill Rocca Figment VIIOil on birch ply30 x 30 cm £1,900

Erin Sevink-Johnston Godzilla Mouse House

Oil and acrylic on board37 x 30 cm

£500

Sarah ShawHeartholdOil on canvas board35 x 35 cm £850

Laura Smith Glass IV

Oil on linen28 x 18 cm

£1,000

James Tailor Acrylic Paint on Canvas and StretcherAcrylic on canvas and stretcher227 x 73 x 80 cm£4,000

Tomas Tichy Artdirector I

Oil and acrylic on canvas200 x 150 cm

£8,500

Anika Tunstall When I Grow UpOil on canvas101 x 76 cm£3,600

Marijke Vasey Untitled

Oil on board50 x 40 cm

£1,500

Tom Jean WebbIt’s Always Hardest to See Right Before The MoonlightDrawing on sewn cotton fabric232 x 148cm£4,000

Tom Jean Webb Untitled

Drawing on sewn cotton fabric195 x 130 cm

£4,000

Paul White Fixtures & FittingsOil on canvas46 x 30 cm£800

THE CURATED SPACE ARTISTS

Grant FosterStarAcrylic and oil on gesso panel Stunted Growth Collage and oil on canvas Today it Hurts, Tomorrow it MattersOil on gesso panel

Georgia Hayes Saved By Drowning 3 Oil on canvas

Walking in the Rainforest Oil on canvas

Chantal Joffe Esme in the Blue Skirt Oil on canvas

David Lock Misfit (Shadow) Watercolour on paper

Misfit (Slice) Watercolour on paper

Misfit (Smoke) Watercolour on paper

Misfit (Unwanted) Watercolour on paper

Sarah Lucas Hard Nud Bronze and concrete (Ed. of 6)

Laura Oldfield Ford Winstanley Estate 1 Oil on MDF

Winstanley Estate 2 Oil on MDF Winstanley Estate 3 Oil on MDF

Winstanley Estate 4 Oil on MDF

Daniel Silver Untitled 2014 Carrara marble

Vicky Wright Extraction IV Oil on wooden crate Pacifist Virgin Oil on wooden panel

rough, representing the same power as themselves. You know it is a head, a face of sorts, but again as ever, work needs to be invested to project a level of detail onto each surface, as well as questioning as to what it might be, and what role it could play.

Chantal Joffe’s paintings cover a substantial range of invention and observation. Portraits of real people, that of her daughter Esme, for instance, her niece Moll, friends, more family and famous fashion models, but Joffe also makes up mainly lovely women who emerge, reconvened, tottering, heightened, perhaps generic, forward out of studies of collaged elements. When Chantal Joffe paints, working from life and, or, image, she draws on a range of closeness and familiarity with

style to remind of a belief in the language of political communication. Vicky Wright, who uses the norm and expectation of form to bring something inexact, blurring, almost unsighted, moves between dimensions with ease, painting on the crate, for instance, around on the other side. The paint seems familiar, a swoosh, a tampered muted mix, seeps into the rough two and three-dimensional surface, and a challenge to concentration and sharp focus is brought to a momentary conclusion, within the understood and expected formula of the formal portrait. The painting contains a level of unnerving counter information. A strong, suited, slightly demonic business person, perhaps, holds himself across the back to front framed surface. Colour is strangely held back but suddenly a purple will flash with the focussed brilliance of a drake’s side feather. A painted eye mirroring a sudden flash of our own understanding emerges sharp from the surface, to look back at us and fix on the world it surveys as prey.

While Wright and Silver use the surface to approximate an understanding of power, about

something altogether different in that it carries a complete and final sense of promise with it. The background of Grant Forster’s painting is not broken, the scene is set and a cluster of people squat in a huddle, a face with many eyes for stars, is not in any way obviously about challenging the world we see. Neither portrait nor icon, the touch is slight and for the artist it seems to be about getting as close as possible to the decorative joy of painting with ease to fend off seriousness, yet there is a transgressive quality about it all the same. The child crouching, a light touch, in probably a scene that might have come from a photograph that in itself would have come from painting. How dangerous it is; no saints, just stars, no gods, but kids crouching in the dust.

apparent ease as the paint is mixed, or even appears to mix itself directly on the canvas. Painting here is an incident that mimics heart pumping blood through the veins, and this is where the challenge catches.

For Laura Oldfield Ford the power is in the narrative as she walks beside the dual carriageway and under the pedestrian bridges of a post industrial age where corporations avoid paying tax and the ‘job seeker’ is fined for missing an appointment. She makes paintings, drawings and magazines about the psychological fabric of the British city with its diminishing public space and cuts in welfare. She draws in heightened monochrome a Hogarthian but contemporary progress through the periphery of the city. Using an orthodox almost adolescent, as well as back of exercise book Fanzine style, she features real people, in this case a squatter from Ireland, who moves from room to room in his home. This fine combination of social description and comment; an empty pub, a bridge over the canal, people on a bench in front of a locked shop with stained concrete is executed in a recognizable, almost 19th Century

Chantal Joffe, Esme in the Blue Skirt, Oil on canvas

Laura Oldfield Ford, Winstanley Estate 2, Oil on MDF Vicky Wright, Extraction IV, Oil on wooden crate

Grant Foster, Today it Hurts, Tomorrow it Matters, Oil on gesso

direct power of association to bring forward found, made, free and easy elements, often using wallpaper scale print to provide a context. Here though Lucas’ sculpture refers to what the figure might look like, as well as what it may in a more naughty and basic way produce.

Familiarity of media is still part of the heartbeat of artistic life. The relationship to all of the work here is also graphic, constructed out of the language of reproduction, sharp outline, and mass communication. David Lock makes young men emerge out of a range of reconvened elements using paper to bring together, in this case, in watercolour, elements from a broken two-dimensional world. Representing a break in the cut-up piece of paper allows a Cubistic reality to permeate the surface of the canvas or paper. The figure inhabits a surface the same way

relationship to the image of figures in the case of Georgia Hayes’ paintings, is the apparently hasty representation of the experience of incident, place, and moment. She explains, straightforwardly, two paintings: “Walking in the Rainforest” was after looking at a tableau of facsimile humans among stuffed apes in the Natural History Museum in Brussels, and “Saved by Drowning 3” is from the fountain in a square in Ortigia, Sicily, of the goddess Artemis rescuing a favourite nymph from the river god by changing her into water. Looming up, with all the pictorial quality of the conversion of Saul. Trying to get it right, to catch the viable expressive moment somehow between under and over painting, Hayes paints the concert, a horse, a number of small but powerful objects in a British Museum exhibition. The figure reminds, rewinds, the memory of knowledge. It is assumed, anyway, that a painting will carry the structure and promise of space within it.

Sarah Lucas, Hard Nud, Bronze and concrete

the actor inhabits the stage. Such broken representation brings an unorthodoxy to bear, a sort of happy families, or snap, with components that make the face a series of visual consequences. Lock paints truthfully what is myopically untrue. People have a strange sense, the combination of upper lip with moustache, unhappy faint eyes, a sort of Gaydar build up of possibility and personal detail not shared, the combination of exciting possibility and broken experience.

Making a portrait from reality, or from collage, actuality and approximate invention, is the act of, on the whole, making something exist, the hand is already there. The figure exists in the unseen just as much as it is here to tell us something completely other than itself. The combination of felt, almost first-hand experience, and the

David Lock, Misfit (Slice), Watercolour on paper

Georgia Hayes, Saved By Drowning 3, Oil on canvas

The figure in Hayes’s paintings might seem to visit the canvas, to even pass through, yet the figure has traditionally been felt to exist within sculpture. Daniel Silver makes or releases figures, investing them, reinforced, value-added, with the metaphorical weight of the history of the portrait bust and classical figure. For Silver the figure is one we project upon. A talisman that is apparently invisible in its presumption of a religious, conceptual and formal role. Empty, full, pulled out of material or cast solid still, he makes half god, half human, presences emerge from within an expectation of the possible, and the memory of sculptural history. Faces in a progressing and diminishing state of realization, heads sitting on shoulders and ridges, smooth and

Daniel Silver, Untitled 2014, Carrara marble

THE CURATED SPACE

“Each year, the Prize attracts thousands of visitors to Mall Galleries. But this year we aim to reach out to an even wider audience by introducing a new ‘Curated Space’ within the exhibition. Here our widely respected Guest Curator, Sacha Craddock, has organised a smaller exhibition of works by eight leading contemporary artists, each representing a different approach to figuration. We hope it will enhance and complete the exhibition’s comprehensive annual survey of Figurative Art Today.”

Lewis McNaught Director, Mall Galleries

Sacha Craddock is a freelance critic and curator, co-founder of Bloomberg Space and active Chair of the Board of New Contemporaries.

After studying painting at St Martins and then Chelsea School of Art, she started to write criticism for The Guardian and then The Times. She has curated a very large range of exhibitions including a six-year programme of contemporary art for Sadler’s Wells.

The artists chosen to exhibit in The Curated Space are British artist and psychogeographer Laura Oldfield Ford; renowned British figurative painter Chantal Joffe; London based sculptor Daniel Silver; painter David Lock; figurative, expressive painter Georgia Hayes; sculptor Sarah Lucas, who will represent the UK at next year’s Venice Biennale; painter Grant Foster, and finally painter Vicky Wright.

The celebrated painter, Bert Irvin, explained many years ago that as he knows what an ear looks like he sees no need to draw one. From the lyrical, through the mystical, to the mathematical, abstraction is less in evidence today. The total artistic principle and belief has, in part, been replaced by a quicker set of signals, and the figure is always there to represent, time, style and disaster. It is obvious that we cannot help measure in terms of ourselves, not just one to one, our width and breath, but also our own experience of illustration and intention, from the comic book to the painted ceiling. It is never questioned whether we need the figure as an image in front of us, staying still or moving through, or reaching out. Despite movement through virtual space and real life, we still recognize a shift from mindful to mindlessness, and depend on the knowledge of our physicality. The body breathes and sees, while the brain works to tell us what to see. Figuration is the equivalent of the sky, sometimes blue, but always there.

In the late 1940s Prunella Clough started her artistic career by making paintings of dockers and lorry drivers,

ALWAYS THERE

The Curated Space is new to The Threadneedle Prize exhibition and complements the open entry competition.

Sacha Craddock

but soon began to represent, and use, the objects of everyday life. With the bright, easy, active gesture of a handheld windmill with plastic or paper turned back on itself, for instance, the whirring of air activated by the breath of a child, becomes a stand-in for the body. The work selected for The Threadneedle Prize covers a tremendous number of ways of saying what a figure can mean, aspire to, or even fail at, and this small exhibition will run alongside to represent a thoroughly different approach because work will be less dependent on an instant level of individual association and can have space.

Sarah Lucas’ ‘Hard Nud’ is one of a series of complete gestures which mimic the imagining and making of physical fact. Solid in role and emphatic gravity, the piece is invented yet we recognize it. We are talking of the surface of the skin, a sexual feeling, perhaps, where the hand may follow the surface and not necessarily see. Certain artists equate the touch of paint with the edge of the skin, a skin of depiction in reality, touching as much as making an outline. Sarah Lucas has forever played with the