The artists nominated by
London-based Sophie Gladstone produces refreshingly honest work about her pursuit of cultural capital, through considered still lifes and self-portraits. She draws attention to society’s obsession with performance and perception of success, honing in on details of daily rituals and consumerism. Gladstone curates a duality in her aesthetic, which many might recognise and relate to in appreciation or distaste.
Studies in Huddersfield brought Silvana Trevale to the UK from Venezuela, where she was born and raised. Though the photographer has already seen notable success with her commercial work, her personal projects deserve equal recognition. Her ongoing series, Venezuelan Youth, captures the younger generation of her home country with a warmth that contrasts the social and political crisis currently unfolding there.
Billy Barraclough is a recent graduate from the MA photography course at University of the West of England, Bristol. In his tender black and white documentary projects, he captures moments of quiet contemplation with captivating sensitivity. The fact that he approaches his practice from a personal perspective is a token of his understanding of human connection and communication.
Another recent graduate, Tayo Adekunle completed a BA at Edinburgh College of Art this year. Placing herself in front of the camera lens, she directly confronts
photography’s dark history by recreating 19th century images of sensationalised Black bodies. Her work is as much an interrogation of dehumanisation, as a personal exploration of her culture, ancestry and inherited trauma.
Swiss photographer Matthieu Croizier completes our 2021 nominations. Taking inspiration from a variety of sources, which ranges from 19th century medical archives to David Lynch’s 1977 horror sci-fi Eraserhead, he uses his lens to explore queerness and his experience of it. For Croizier, photography gives him the space to understand his identity, the language of the queer community, and all the superficial social constructs that have been connected to them over time. It is an act of self-expression – literally and figuratively.
London-based Sophie Gladstone produces refreshingly honest work about her pursuit of cultural capital, through considered still lifes and self-portraits. She draws attention to society’s obsession with performance and perception of success, honing in on details of daily rituals and consumerism. Gladstone curates a duality in her aesthetic, which many might recognise and relate to in appreciation or distaste.
Studies in Huddersfield brought Silvana Trevale to the UK from Venezuela, where she was born and raised. Though the photographer has already seen notable success with her commercial work, her personal projects deserve equal recognition. Her ongoing series, Venezuelan Youth, captures the younger generation of her home country with a warmth that contrasts the social and political crisis currently unfolding there.
Billy Barraclough is a recent graduate from the MA photography course at University of the West of England, Bristol. In his tender black and white documentary projects, he captures moments of quiet contemplation with captivating sensitivity. The fact that he approaches his practice from a personal perspective is a token of his understanding of human connection and communication.
Another recent graduate, Tayo Adekunle completed a BA at Edinburgh College of Art this year. Placing herself in front of the camera lens, she directly confronts
photography’s dark history by recreating 19th century images of sensationalised Black bodies. Her work is as much an interrogation of dehumanisation, as a personal exploration of her culture, ancestry and inherited trauma.
Swiss photographer Matthieu Croizier completes our 2021 nominations. Taking inspiration from a variety of sources, which ranges from 19th century medical archives to David Lynch’s 1977 horror sci-fi Eraserhead, he uses his lens to explore queerness and his experience of it. For Croizier, photography gives him the space to understand his identity, the language of the queer community, and all the superficial social constructs that have been connected to them over time. It is an act of self-expression – literally and figuratively.
Billy Barraclough (b. 1994) is a photographic artist based in London. Directed by his curiosity in the relationship between people and their environment, his work to date has explored ideas around identity, emotion and personal history.
A common thread throughout his practice is an interest in the metaphorical potential of photographs. His project, ‘John’s Notebooks’ (2020-2021), pulls on the symbolism present with the landscape of the home to touch on the emotions and memories connected to the childhood loss of his father. Whereas his most recent work ‘Murmurations’ (2020-21), employs the starling murmuration as a symbol to reflect on the current global crisis and the act of coming together and converging as a group.
Barraclough is a recent graduate of the MA Photography programme at Bristol UWE and is due to exhibit his master’s project, ‘John’s Notebooks’, at the 2021 Bristol Photo Festival.
Silvana is a Photographer born and raised in Caracas, Venezuela. Her portrait based work is a fusion between documentary and fashion, where she explores her Latin American roots within both spectrums.
The escalating crisis in her home country of Venezuela has motivated her to produce Trevale’s ongoing recent piece “Venezuelan Youth”, which has been widely exhibited notably at her solo show at ThePrintSpace in London and at Vogue Italia’s Photo Vogue Festival this year. Through the progress in her MA, she has taken a closer look at the women of her family. As her work carries a nostalgic density towards her home and family, she returned to her childhoods memories and recent events. By collaborating with her grandmother Rosa and mother Maria, she explores the past of her great grandmother Cayetana. With the intention to celebrate her bravery as an indigenous woman and her roots. By, observing the Latin essence the women of her life grew up with.
Matthieu Croizier (1994) is an artist and freelance photographer based in Lausanne, Switzerland. He graduated from the Photography School of Vevey (CEPV) in 2017 and from the Bachelor Photography at ECAL in 2020.
Using photography as a tool, he tries to turn reality into fantasy, or the other way around, and to blur the line that separates what is considered normal from what is not. In his work, he is mainly interested in the representation of the human body and seeks the tension between opposing notions, as the friction from beauty to ugly, from fascination to repulsion or from ordinary to spectacular. He is one of the laureates of the Carte Blanche Students 2020, organized by Paris Photo, Picto Foundation and SNCF Gare & Connexions.
Tayo Adekunle is a British Nigerian photographer based in Edinburgh. Working a lot with self-portraiture, she uses her work to explore issues surrounding race, gender and sexuality as well as racial and colonial history.
Her work is centred around reworkings of historical tropes relating to the black female body, taking from contexts that include art historical paintings and sculptures as well as 19th century colonial photography. She works to subvert established notions about black female sexuality and the standard of beauty ascribed to black females. By placing historical imagery in a contemporary context, the relationship between the treatment of the black female body in the past and its treatment in the present day is explored. Since graduating from Edinburgh College of Art with a BA (Hons) in Photography, she has been a recipient of the SSA New Graduate Award and the Degree Show Purchase Prize, resulting in her work becoming part of The University of Edinburgh Art Collection.
Sophie Gladstone is a photographer based in London.
After finishing her undergraduate studies in 2018, Sophie Gladstone has continued her art practise while working in editorial positions. Her work has been exhibited in both Europe and Asia and was recently shortlisted for the Emergentes International Photography Award and nominated for the Foam Paul Huf Award. Currently, Gladstone works as Assistant Photography Editor at Wallpaper*, a luxury design-focused publication. This role feeds back into her photography, informing a critical perspective as she works across the reality and fantasy of contemporary visual culture. Aesthetics of advertising, social media and e-commerce are also inspiration points. Through her practice, she performs the capitalist pressures that undermine positive traits within us, such as the desire to improve ourselves and connect with others.
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