Zena Blackwell
Zena Blackwell’s inaugural solo exhibition in 2018 marked the arrival of a tour de force presence on the Cardiff Arts Scene. Juggling curation, motherhood and a serious engagement with painting, Zena has pursued her practice with the ambition of achieving a sustainable career, alongside artistic progression through evolving technique and pictorial scope.
In exploring the particular realm of childhood, Zena has turned the convention of portraiture around; through her particular and recognisable language, painting has become the conduit to convey a parallel world, where the uncanny exists as the norm.
Lucia Jones
In the gaps between lockdowns in 2020, Lucia Jones presented ‘Tales from the cutting Room Floor’ a glossy, witty and luminous exploration through painting of female protagonist subjects, referring to Hollywood standards of glamour, revealed on the point of imploding, despite appearances. Her latest works take further the idea of dislocated self identity - glimpses as to what we are missing revealed through its omission, the core of who we are, visibly blanked out of the ‘version’ presented; referring back to the stereotypical ‘feminine’ of the office serving the environment and social place, conforming to standards of decoration as if a part of the furniture; surface glamour is denoted by a red lip, hinting at the misogynistic reduction of woman to the realm of fetish, underlined through menial ‘roles’ of the receptionist, always struck behind a desk, seated. Perhaps these ‘retro’ tropes of womanhood are still current; it’s perhaps in looking backwards that Jones reveals the present; the pressure to appear perfect, to overstretch, to be expected to service others to the point of extinction.
Ellie Young
The series of ceramic portrait tiles which formed part of Ellie Young’s 2022 joint solo prize winners’ exhibition ‘I want to believe’ are an attempt to document something of the artist's experience of the world via pop and high culture. They can represent an exorcism of ideas, an outlet for an over-saturation of images from film and television, in conjunction with a documenting of historic moments which resonate for her.
Creating a dialogue between fast media and enduring images; for example Botticelli nymphs breathe visibly next to a 21st century celebrity smoking. The game of making the transient ‘breath’ visible through clay becomes the signifier and connector of times and worlds across all level of media.
Kate Shooter
Kate Shooter jointly won the 2021 Solo Art prize with Ellie Young and in 2022 presented her solo exhibition ’wicker woman’ - joyous, irreverent ‘reflections of Kate’s own self-navigation, wrestling with life living in a household of males, locating her own Womaness, as an element which jostles and merges into a composite self.’
Wicker Woman was an exhibition of paintings and drawings which were tender, playful and cheeky; where drawn elements related to body and domestic everyday objects, or vessels ride alongside and over softer painted forms which have bubbled up to challenge, poke fun and revel in their own alternative landscape.
Delphi Campbell
Delphi Campbell is the latest artist to receive the MADE Solo Art Prize. Her work moves between whatever medium best articulates each expression of her being; soft sculptures, paintings and stitched ‘objects’ defy compartmentalism.
Delphi explores the subject of daily encounters; living ‘life on an intersection’ with a system or framework which is loaded not in favour of living with the reality of an ‘othered’ body and identity. Delphi’s work naturally expresses life through a queer lense with humour, humanity and immediate grace which is generous in welcoming the observer.