Platform Shows

Ayobola Kekere-Ekun’s Platform exhibition presents a series of paintings that examine how unresolved trauma can affect memory. These works aim to reconstruct the artist’s obscured childhood, drawing from old family photographs, conversations with family members and pop cultural references. In grappling with the highly personal, Kekere-Ekun attempts to unravel the connections between the self and identity and how these interact with individual and collective memory.

Chosen Charity: Stand to End Rape

Gill Button is known for her captivating translation of found imagery; creating gestural, intimate portraits that are deeply personal and intuitive. Capturing moments of wonder, melancholy, strength or vulnerability, Button’s practice makes us question how we connect to each other, but ultimately to ourselves. Her larger canvases, often cinematic in nature, depict moments of contemplation; evocative of distant dreams, fears or memories.

Chosen Charity: Mind

Artists Gabrielle Banks and Skye Volmar studied painting together as undergrads at the Rhode Island School of Design; they were two of four black women to graduate from the department in 2019. They currently live and work in their respective hometowns: Providence, Rhode Island for Banks, Los Angeles for Volmar. This bi-coastal body of work was created over the past year, recommuning the connection the artists had created in order to survive a predominantly white institution of higher education. Given Banks and Volmar’s shared interests, their work inevitably overlaps, particularly around ideas of socialization and study. In this two-person Platform presentation, Banks and Volmar present a series of works known collectively as Split Ends.

Chosen Charity: The Loveland Foundation Therapy Fund

Edozie Anedu’s latest body of work (Allegory) is an etymology of symbols. Referencing popular culture and religious iconography, he investigates how meaning is made and held in the collective unconscious. “It’s like learning a language. First you learn the alphabet, then you learn to spell, then you learn to put sentences together.” Anedu’s earliest exposure to art was through the Catholic church. He was moved by the indulgent artistry of Biblical tableaux, emotive iconography and opulent mass. He later became aware of the intimate relationship between the advancement of doctrine and the proliferation of (religious) icons and questioned how much free agency is given to them.

Chosen Charity: The Street Project Foundation, Lagos

Heesoo Kim was born in Seoul, South Korea in 1984. His work is primarily a reflection on what it is to be human, what it feels like to exist day to day as an individual within a larger social system. In this body of work Kim isolates the only truly universal human experience (that of ageing) and spotlights this phenomena as a potential source of collective catharsis.

Chosen Charity: Conservation International

"My paintings and ceramic figures have a guiding thread: all these big-nosed, beardy men, who explore their place in the world, their emotions, relations, impulses, and sexual desires with their tummies. Slowly but surely, I’ve been building a universe where these characters recreate personal experiences. Their passions are narrated through anatomic and scientific curiosities. The process of putting together the pieces of a forgotten mythology has helped me address my artistic concerns."

Chosen Charity: Casa Frida

Giovanni Vetere’s Platform exhibition presents six new ceramic sculptures and four limited-edition photographs, produced in the artist’s studio in Rome. Working with performance and sculpture, Vetere’s artistic practice is rooted in the idea of ‘embodiment’ and on expanding the notion of ‘body’ and our sense of ‘human’ on this planet. 

Chosen Charity: Mare Vivo

Alex Seton’s Platform exhibition is comprised of four real, physical sculptures, and four others that exist in Augmented Reality. Together they form the artist’s ‘Personal Monument’ series: a body of work that continues Seton’s explorations of classical statuary and public monuments, but does so in a way that shifts the established emphasis towards something more personal and private.

Chosen Charity: The Asylum Seeker Resource Centre

Youada’s practice is rooted in the materials and aesthetics of street art. As a teenager he would move through the streets of Huangzhou, honing his spray-painting skills and imbibing a very particular visual style that’s unique to Chinese street art culture.

Chosen Charity: Street Art for Mankind

Deborah Brown’s recent paintings were made during the Covid-19 pandemic in New York, where the artist lives and works. Reflecting a time of social isolation, the paintings depict individuals in domestic settings with their pets, as well as still life objects drawn from the artist’s collections. The common thread is an examination of what it means to be human in a time of loss and resilience.

Chosen Charity: Still Waters in a Storm

David Henry Nobody Jr is the name given to David’s online performative alter-ego. He is known for transforming himself into bizarre characters using masks and wearable sculptures comprised of food and consumerist detritus. This practice is referred to as “Resemblagè,” a term coined by David to describe the unique conceptualisations which humorously and disturbingly explore the dark side of American pop-culture.

Chosen Charity: The Campaign Against Hunger

For Brooklyn-based artist Nicolas Holiber, lockdown, during the early days of coronavirus, was a time for deep self-reflection, triggering a shift in the content of his work. In a response to the times, Holiber began to focus on themes of conflict and tragedy with an aim to explore human behaviour. His work is not necessarily a comment on these issues but is more of an exposé. Holiber’s paintings are able to capture all of the stresses, anxieties, and uncertainties we may be feeling at this very moment.

Chosen Charity: Artistic Noise

Elsa Rouy takes to the Platform with a new series of work that continues her exploration of bodily fluids, a theme that has gripped her for some time. 

Chosen Charities: Basis Sex Work Project, Leeds, UK & The Trussell Trust

Ziping Wang’s work deals with the issue of invasive tech, contributing to a necessary debate that has established itself at the forefront of our societies across the globe.

Chosen Charity: The Center For Humane Technology.