The Red Mansion Art Prize Exhibition 2019
18 May - 29 May 2019
Weston Studio, RA Schools
Daily 10am – 6pm
Friday 10am – 10pm
Free, no booking required.
Six artists representing some of the UK’s top art schools present new work made following a four-week residency in China.
This group exhibition features the winners of the Red Mansion Art Prize 2018, and includes performance, installation, video, sculpture, print and poetry.
The Red Mansion Art Prize was established in 2002 to promote artistic exchange between China and the UK. The prize winners travelled to China for an artist residency where they lived and worked alongside local artists.
Featured Artists: Rachel Cheung (Goldsmiths College), Ibrahim Cisse (Royal College of Art), Débora Delmar (Royal Academy Schools), Ant Hamlyn (Chelsea College of Arts), Paula Morison (Slade School of Fine Art) and Joe Richardson (Central Saint Martins).
Daily 10am – 6pm
Friday 10am – 10pm
Free, no booking required.
Image gallery
Live performances
Rachel Cheung will be performing 门 WALK live throughout the show.
Performances will take place at 1, 2, and 3 pm on Fri 24 May, Sat 25 May, Monday 27 May and Tuesday 28 May.
门 WALK is a performance based on a science fiction story written by Rachel Cheung about the futures of China, in response to her experiences in Beijing during the Red Mansion residency. The two performers embody a character from Beijing, who wears strange, futuristic and garish garments representing day-to-day life in a future China.
The Chinese character 门 (which translates to door or gate) is printed onto the floor, forming a catwalk that the performers walk up and down, while the soundtrack plays. The popularity of high fashion in modern Beijing created a façade of power and elitism, which can be found in the various strange merchandise and accessories within 门WALK.
Artist statements
Rachel Cheung is a performance and interdisciplinary artist based in London. Her practice investigates the futurologies of humans and technology in conjunction with science fictions within contemporary art. Cheung’s live performances look at the role of the human body within a science-fictional performance space; playing between ‘hard’ (physical) and ‘soft’ (virtual) spaces by using choreographic and improvised movements to activate installations, sculptures and objects.
Poet and editor, Ibrahim Cisse created Lost in Time in 2017. Lost in Time is a publishing venture dedicated to recording and documenting Cisse’s surroundings, notably artists’ reflections and practices. As an artist, Cisse embraces the poetic as a means to expand his writing beyond the literal. These experimentations are leading to scripts, visual art (installations, photography, collages) and performances. Cisse is involved in educational programmes and initiatives taking place between Europe and the African continent. With these endeavours, Cisse aims to further the potential for art to emancipate and create realities grounded in imaginations.
Débora Delmar (b. 1986, Mexico City) lives and works in London where she is completing the Postgraduate Programme at the Royal Academy Schools. Through her work Delmar investigates consumer culture, capitalist lifestyles, and aspirational aesthetics. She is particularly focused on the societal effects of globalisation such as class issues and cultural hegemony. Delmar creates multi-sensory installations that commonly are composed of elements such as fabricated and appropriated objects, reproductions of iPhone photographs, and elements such as scent, sound and performance, as well as online interventions.
Ant Hamlyn (b. 1993, Northampton) lives and works in London. Hamlyn’s work draws on stagecraft, magic, arcades, the body and our relationship with modern technology to explore our shifting enthusiasms towards contemporary life. Hamlyn offers up sculptural objects, texts and kinetic installations which aim not to act as hyperbolic motivational offerings but attempt to delve into surreal, transient and sometimes humorous states of being.
Paula Morison (b. 1985, Swindon) is a conceptual artist working in a variety of media. Her practice is broadly focused on how we, as humans, try to order the world around us. She looks at the systems people create and the behaviours we exhibit that help us exert perceived control over our existence. Her interests include data, quantitative information and translation (in the widest sense of the word).
Joe Richardson’s work examines male behaviour in pubs, cartoons, and film, dealing with anxiety surrounding success and the performance of 'masculinity'. The works operate as commentators, facades, and stages for masculinity to be played out on, examined, and ridiculed, questioning whether failure can provide cathartic liberation from masculine norms.
The Red Mansion Foundation
The Red Mansion Foundation is a not-for-profit organisation, which promotes artistic exchange between China and the UK. Our mission is to increase knowledge and appreciation of contemporary Chinese art in the UK whilst encouraging understanding.
Weston Studio
This public exhibition space is dedicated to innovative and experimental projects, exhibitions, installations, and interventions; alongside occasional events, readings, and performances presented by Royal Academy Schools students and graduates.
Until it opened to the public in May 2018, the Weston Studio was a working studio occupied by generations of Royal Academy Schools students. Similar studios are still located on either side of the space.
Royal Academy Schools
The Royal Academy Schools offers a 3-year full-time postgraduate programme in contemporary fine art for up to 17 artists each year. The course is aimed at artists who want to develop their practice through exposure to new ideas and constructive critique, dialogue with a diversity of voices and access to specialist workshops.
The Royal Academy was founded ‘to promote the appreciation and understanding of art’, and also its practice. At its heart was the creation of the Royal Academy Schools, a school of art established to set the standard for the training and professionalism of the next generation of artists, to nurture and develop the artists of tomorrow. The ambition of the founding Academicians was to facilitate the transfer of knowledge from one generation of artists to the next and that this should be, 'free to all students who shall be qualified to receive advantage from such studies’ (Royal Academy of Arts Instrument of Foundation 1768) and this remains the case to this day.