Congratulations to Hur Shan and Won Jiho for winning bursaries from the Royal British Society of Scultpors. Along with other winners they will be featured in a group show at the society’s headquarters in South Kensington:
Bursary Awards 2013
12 September 2013 – 18 October 2013
Wednesday–Friday, 12:30–5:30pm
108 Old Brompton Road, London SW7 3RA
Ruth Brenner | Dorcas Casey | Martin Cordiano | Adeline de Monseignat | Joe Drakeford | Shan Hur | Matt Moser-Clark | Lisa Selby | Lucy Tomlins | Jiho Won
RBS Bursary Awards 2013, now in its 13th year, showcases the excellent work of 10 of the best emerging contemporary sculptors for a vibrant group exhibition. This year’s award winners confront the visceral and psychological effects of architecture; transform domestic materials into uncanny creatures and objects; and test the boundaries of sculpture as a discipline
Royal British Society of Sculptors Bursary Awards are designed to benefit sculptors’ in the early stages of their careers by providing opportunities and support enabling them to make the transition to a full and successful professional practice. To this end, winners will receive free membership to RBS for two years, opportunities to exhibit, present talks, apply for residencies, participate in training seminars, attend RBS events and access the unique RBS mentoring scheme. Artists also will participate in the Sculpture Slam talks to give the public a brief insight into their current practice.
Peter Murray, Executive Director of Yorkshire Sculpture Park writes that ‘The Royal British Society of Sculptors has, since its inception, provided professional support for artists and contributed to the debate concerning the role of art and in particular sculpture in society. The broad range of approaches adopted by this year’s ten bursary winners emphasises not only the continuation of this tradition, but the Society’s determination to provide a platform for emerging artists at critical stages of their careers’.
Sculpture Slam Talks (Free): Wednesday, 2 October 2013, 6:30–8:30pm
Shan Hur
Hur Shan: Forgotten #06, (2011). Concrete, plywood, timber and vase.
My work reflects my primary interest in the relationship between the mobile viewer and modern architectural space. As exposure to the built environment has increasingly become a banal part of daily life my work provokes the viewer to rethink their surroundings, revoking their sense of spatial temporal experience.
Works like ‘Forgotten #06’ aim to challenge the connection between spatial perception and one’s surroundings and is particularly concerned with the idea of ‘vernacular modernism’. The vernacular can be understood as an imaginary place, evoking a sense of locality and historicity, which allows a language of aesthetic forms to transform an imagined place into a concrete reality.
Jiho Won
Won Jiho: Two Flag (2012). Cable ties and scaffolding net.
My recent projects are focused on two strong symbols of a national group, ‘flags’ and ‘anthems’. Long used as a tool to keep patriotism alive in a group of people they also draw clear lines between groups. Where most existing art about conflict tends to focus on depicting the horrors of war, my work instead aims to explore the ways in which art is more directly involved in social turmoil by questioning more fundamental examples.
Won Jiho: Monument for Flagless Society (2012). Wood, cable ties and scaffolding net.
‘Two Flag’ examines how a flag is a simple visual symbol of a group that people are able to identify with, yet one which also has the potential risk of being used as a tool to take the crowd to where authority wants them to be. In my opinion it plays a similar role to the bullfighter’s cape.
