Artists’ Award 2021 and Spring 2020 programme

BALTIC Artists’ Award 2021
BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead is delighted to announce the third BALTIC Artists’ Award, a biennial art award selected by three established international artists. This year, Mika Rottenberg, Hito Steyerl and Otobong Nkanga, were each invited to nominate the work of an emerging artist. New work by each of the selected artists, Ima-Abasi Okon, Laleh Khorramian and Fernando García-Dory, will be presented in a group exhibition opening July 2021.

BALTIC Artists’Award is a biennial award established to recognise artists deserving of an international platform and offers a step-change moment in their career, each receiving an exhibition at BALTIC, GBP 25,000 to realise new work and a GBP 5,000 artist fee.

Selected by Otobong Nkanga, artist Ima-Abasi Okon works with sculpture, sound and video to produce installations that explore the historical and political charge of materials.

Selected by Mika Rottenberg, artist Laleh Khorramian’s practice combines the cosmological thinking of ancient cultures, their complex mythologies, and spiritual vocabularies within her own imagined worlds—synthesizing them into histories that are both futuristic and ancient.

Selected by Hito Steyerl, artist Fernando García-Dory´s work engages with the relationship between culture and nature, as manifested in multiple contexts, from landscape and the rural, to desires and expectations in relation to identity, utopia and the potential for social change.

Spring 2020 Programme

Exhibitions

Imran Perretta: the destructors
March 14–June 28, 2020
Preview: Friday, March 13, 6:30pm

Imran Perretta explores ideas of state power, identity and biopolitics. His major new film commission and solo exhibition the destructors reflects on his own experience as a young man of Bangladeshi heritage, and explores personal and collective experiences of marginalisation and oppression. Set within the Bangladeshi community of Tower Hamlets, the film reconsiders the figure of the alienated male youth and explores the complexities of adolescence and "coming of age" for young Muslim men living in the UK.

Imran Perretta’s the destructors is produced by Chisenhale Gallery, London and Spike Island, Bristol, and commissioned by Chisenhale Gallery; Spike Island; the Whitworth, The University of Manchester; and BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead and supported by Outset Contemporary Art Fund.

Abel Rodríguez
March 14–June 28, 2020
Preview: Friday, March 13, 6:30pm

Abel Rodríguez (Mogaje Guihu) is an elder from the Nonuya ethnic group, native to the Cahuinarí river in the Colombian Amazon. Rodríguez’s work is grounded in his ancestral knowledge of the indigenous plants of the region, which was passed to him by his uncle.

In the 1990s, the Colombian armed conflict and the exploitation of natural resources in the rainforest displaced Rodríguez and his family from his native land. As a way to preserve his knowledge and memory of his region, Rodríguez creates detailed paintings and drawings that depict the ecosystem of the rainforest in the area of the Colombian Amazon he is from, with intricate details of the flora and fauna. His knowledge is highly valued by western botanists and has gained international recognition over the past five years within the visual arts.

BALTIC presents Rodríguez’s first solo exhibition in the UK, for which the artist has created new works.

Huma Bhabha
May 23–October 4, 2020
Preview: Friday, May 22, 6:30pm

Huma Bhabha’s work addresses themes of colonialism, war, displacement and memory, drawing on a wide-range of art historical and cultural references, from Classicism and Cubism to sci-fi, comic books and horror films. For her first major survey exhibition in Europe, Bhabha will present a selection of sculptures, comprising found and discarded materials such as Styrofoam, clay, wire, cork, animal bones and wood, alongside drawings on photographs and works on paper, mainly focusing on the human figure.

Supported by The Henry Moore Foundation.

The Making of Husbands
May 23–October 4, 2020
Preview: Friday, May 22, 6:30pm

The Making of Husbands: Christina Ramberg in Dialogue is a major exhibition that brings together works by Christina Ramberg (1946 – 95), her contemporaries and younger artists to explore the urgency with which her work speaks to contemporary debate around gender and identity.

Artists include: Alexandra Bircken, Sara Deraedt, Gaylen Gerber, Konrad Klapheck, Ghislaine Leung, Senga Nengudi, Ana Pellicer, Christina Ramberg, Richard Rezac, Diane Simpson, Frieda Toranzo Jaeger and Kathleen White

The Making of Husbands: Christina Ramberg in Dialogue is produced by KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin and curated by Anna Gritz (Curator, KW). The exhibition will travel to 49 nord 6 est - Frac Lorraine, Metz from February to May 2020 before travelling to BALTIC. The exhibition is made possible through support from the Capital Cultural Fund and Terra Foundation for American Art.

Events

BALTIC’s events series each season expands on BALTIC’s programme strands and exhibition themes. Visit baltic.art/events for further details and to book tickets.

Selected events between February and May 2020 include:

Ultimate Dancer: Hevi Metle
Wednesday, February 12, 2-8pm

Hevi Metle is an epic installation saga of six hours, six minutes and six seconds, focusing on a feminist approach to alchemy. It explores transformation, mysticism, resistance and retaliation through matter and form, working from solidity to fluidity. The work includes an integrated touch tour and experimental visual description performed live by Juliana Capes.

Created in collaboration and performed with Angela Goh and Michelle Hannah. A Tramway co-production with BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art. Further support from Dance4, The Work Room, Siobhan Davies Dance and the National Lottery through Creative Scotland. This project is informed by a period of choreographic research residencies with Critical Path at Tasdance and the Drill in Australia (funded by Creative Scotland and Australia Council for the Arts).

Hanna Tuulikki: Deer Dancer
Wednewsday, March 18, 6:30pm
 
Exploring the space between nature documentary and anthropological account, Hanna Tuulikki presents a performative lecture, part of her recent project Deer Dancer (2019).

Zinzi Minott: A 24-hour dance performance
April 25-26

A new experience is coming to the Performance Space at BALTIC. This world premiere presents a 24-hour dance solo performed by Zinzi Minott amid a 12-screen video installation. This new commission comprises dance material collected from 30 dance contributors specialising in Black dance, movement and performance, and archival and found dance. Expect visuals, dance and powerful music.

Zinzi Minott’s work focuses on the relationship between dance, bodies and politics. She explores how dance is perceived through the prisms of race, queer culture, gender and class; and the position of black female bodies within the form.

Commissioned by CONTINUOUS, a partnership between BALTIC and Siobhan Davies Dance. Supported by Arts Council England and John Ellerman Foundation.

In Conversation: Britta Marakatt-Labba
Wednesday, April 15, 6:30pm

A rare opportunity to hear artist Britta Marakatt-Labba discuss her unique and captivating textile work together with Animalesque curator Filipa Ramos.

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