Nominated and introduced by Anita Zabludowicz

Oliver Beer (UK, 1982)
Oliver Beer produces photographic works which arrest with their simplicity and beauty. His eye for composition – which extends seamlessly into his carefully constructed ‘documentary’ film works – allows for subjects to be frozen like sculptures, their surfaces and textures lushly overtaking the frame. Beer’s developing practice alerts its audience to their act of meaning making. In recent works this is notable via the act of listening, in particular the way in which our understanding of a subject or situation can be affected by the place in which we hear or experience it.

Beer is a recent Ruskin graduate and was recently awarded the first prize in Channel 4 / Saatchi Gallery ‘4 New Sensations’, exhibition at A Foundation, London. Upcoming exhibitions include in 2010 at IKON Gallery, Birmingham.

www.oliverbeer.co.uk

Oliver Beer / Two Nudes / 2009 / Archival Inkjet Print (framed)
/ 70 x 55cm /
Courtesy of The Artist

Tereza Buŝková (Czech, 1978) 
Bušková’s process is intriguing – she orchestrates tableaux vivants with actors, dancers, props, and costumes which she films and photographs to make her art works. The flatness which is inherent in the final prints is referenced in the situations via the props and make up. Card cut outs and body paint stand in for characters and clothing, playing with both perspective and reality.

Her Czech heritage is in essence her ‘material’. She re-interprets historical traditions, practices, costumes, taking her references from traditional Czech folklore. The pleated skirts or sleeves and the embroidered bodices and head-dresses are remade with reference to original artefacts which she has sourced.

As well as the costumes, Bušková‘s use of screen printing is archaic in this digital age – the ‘screen’ through which the ink is pushed makes a pattern which is almost pixel like.

www.terezabuskova.co.uk  

Alastair Levy (UK, 1979)
Alastair Levy is concerned with trappings of everyday existence and how we interact and understand these elements. His tightly composed images have an intense graphic nature which belies their playful content. In his work items invented to assist in useful yet mundane everyday administration and existence overtake and adapt their surroundings. Acting as a sculptor he creates and captures situations which are at once carefully composed yet utterly facile, linking form and function in innovative and invigorating ways.

Levy graduated in 2008 with an MA in Photography from the Royal College of Art, London. Recent group exhibitions include ‘Matter of Time’, James Taylor Gallery, London, and ‘A patch of grass painted to look like a rock’, IPS Gallery, Ghent and his first solo exhibition was in 2009 at Post Box Gallery, London.

www.alastairlevy.net / www.postboxgallery.com