Exceptional 2017

Exceptional is an exhibition of selected artists who graduated from Goldsmiths, Middlesex University and City & Guilds of London Art School during the last 3 years, who entered Collyer Bristow’s Graduate Art Award. One artist will be the recipient of the Collyer Bristow award of £2000 selected by Iwona Blazwick, Director of the Whitechapel Gallery. 

Rosalind Davis, Collyer Bristow Gallery’s independent curator and a graduate of the RCA,comments: “the works in Exceptional is an illuminating snapshot, from a wide range of new graduate artists, through which we see the themes and concerns that resonate, overlap or are divergent.  Collective themes that have emerged are the confrontation and rejection of throwaway consumerism, mass consumption and urban development including the brutalism of Motherhood, environmental and wildlife degradation, as well as the acceleration and pressures of 21stCentury value systems in modern day life. As a result, the selected works in this exhibition show a sensitive materiality; a desire for the experiential process of making and of artistic and cultural heritage. There is a refreshing interest in image making and the resilience of painting, drawing and sculpture and show a great level of craft, ideas, integrity and potential.”

Sarah Culshaw, partner at Collyer Bristow and head of the Gallery Committee, comments, “Collyer Bristow has been supporting and championing new up-and-coming artists for over twenty years with a dynamic, independently curated programme featuring original exhibitions. The Collyer Bristow Graduate Art Award was set up to celebrate the flair, inventiveness and originality of emerging artists today, and the exhibition as a whole gives graduates what is often their first taste of participating in a dynamic, professionally-curated exhibition in a major city.”

The winner of the Exceptional Award was Emmanuelle Loiselle with commendations for Graham Murtough, Kate Lennard and Lorraine Fossi.

View the online catalogue here.