Desi Pubs, Smethwick
© Jagdish Patel
About the bursary awards
ReFramed and BCVA are offering five £500 bursaries for emerging photographic-based visual artists of colour from Black, Asian and other communities of colour living within the Midlands. This bursary will enable two Midlands-based visual artists to document and explore the effects of COVID-19 in their communities / homes (whilst also following government guidelines).
We want you to respond and reflect creatively to your lived experience of these current times.
The bursary will support you in creating new work between July and September 2020. The work will feature in a publication as well as online on ReFramed and BCVA platforms, and may be exhibited in the future, once lockdown restrictions are eased.
The selected artists will also receive support and mentoring from the ReFramed team throughout the process.
The application process is now closed, and information about the successful artists can be found below.
We are proud to announce the five bursary award winners are Nilupa Yasmin, De’Anne Crooks, Pritt Kalsi, Bharti Parmar and Justin Carey.
Bharti Parmar
Bharti Parmar is an artist and academic based in Birmingham and has a practice of 30 years.
She studied at the Royal College of Art and has a doctorate in fine art which examines the poetics of Victorian material culture. She is a regular speaker at conferences on material culture studies and the postcolonial archive. She has been a trustee of various arts organisations (mac Birmingham, Meadow Arts, Coventry Biennial) and currently serves as an Arts Council England Artistic and Quality Assessor.
She has participated on many international residency programmes, most recently at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin. Recent work includes a commission by ITV to take over their identity logo for a week in March 2019 for #ITVcreates. In July 2020 she was awarded the a-n Time Space Money bursary to research a project on Gandhi, Khadi, cotton and colonialism.
Bharti is interested in vernacular crafts, systems, taxonomy and the poetics of repair. The ReFramed Bursary will support research and development of an embroideredCovid-19 infographic sampler. This long-duration work will be produced in her studio with the assistance of STEAMhouse Birmingham.
Nilupa Yasmin
(Slanguages & Kala Phool award)
Nilupa Yasmin is an Artist and Educator working primarily lens based. Yasmin takes a keen interest in the notion of culture, self-identity and anthropology.
Combined with her love for handcraft and the materiality in photographic explorations, she repeatedly draws upon her own South Asian culture and heritage. Her research examines the principles of craft in art-based practice; becoming an evident methodology shown throughout her work whilst investigating ideals and traditions that are very close to home.
She continually drawing upon what it means to be a British Bangladeshi Muslim Woman, she aims to create a space of representation for the underrepresented, through her photographic practice.
Nilupa will be working with Slanguages & Kala Phool to document women from Soho Road, Birmingham.
De’Anne Crooks
De’Anne Crooks practice revolves around the integral conversations that require a new vehicle of communication, particularly in these complex times. Generally exploring large topics such as identity politics,
De’Anne focuses on the strategically unexplored areas; using multifaceted techniques to unpack theories of race, belonging and colonization. In most cases De’Anne’s art practice, and the outcomes created, prioritise the message over the media. This reluctancy to commit to one media has allowed De’Anne to explore a plethora of artistic approaches ranging from photography and video art to oil painting and performance.
As an artist-educator, much of De’Anne’s current work considers the collaborative and collective value of others; considering her practice as a form of activism rather than a teacher of art. This relationship between pedagogy and contemporary art has pushed De’Anne’s practice further; unearthing new ways of playing. De’Anne recently stated that she wishes to “test art forms commonly removed from those in the Black community”. Using performative art and digital photography, De’Anne has been developing art that addresses culture and politics, prioritising that both message and medium speak to and with marginalised people.
Justin Carey
(BCU Award)
Justin Carey’s work reconsiders the urban environment, looking for connections to memories and emotions that are often unsettled or uncomfortable, as well as contemplating how the urban environment itself - with its inherent contrast between densely-populated spaces and individual solitude - shapes our experience of the world. Carey seeks to invite the viewer into a discourse around universal themes and create room for collaboration and fair representation in his work.
Examining the paradox in the experiences of his mother and himself, Justin will form the basis of his approach to this project, as he documents his mother’s circumstances with images of her environment and the activities she’s engaged in during her isolation, as well as encouraging her to write about these experiences in response to structured questions. He hoes therefore, that in focusing on the part of this story that’s close to home for him, he can connect to broader themes of survival, change and loss that have unfortunately linked so many of us during the pandemic.
Carey was shortlisted for the ArtGemini Prize in 2015 and graduated with merit from the MA photography programme at Falmouth University in 2019. Carey combines his photographic practice with a career as a consultant in the NHS and currently lives in Birmingham, UK.
Pritt Kalsi
(New Art Exchange award)
Multiple Award winning Artist, Pritt Kalsi has been involved in the Graffiti Scene since 1984. Growing up in Birmingham, he was very quickly influenced by the spirit of the city and the hip hop scene that took it. Pritt is from an immigrant family that came to the UK from Nairobi Kenya. Their original roots are Indian. Very working class, his mother was a seamstress and his father a machinist.
As other music trends and cultures came and went. Pritt stayed true to his Hip Hop roots and went to New York to search out his peers and those that pioneered this movement.
His father had a passion for Photography and quickly taught Pritt and his brothers how to use cameras. Whilst studying design, Pritt became interested in film-making and furthered his interest in photography, whilst at the same time, learning the in’s and out of sampling and DJing. Working with drum machines, old records, turntables and 4 track recorders. After meeting Legendary UK Graffiti Artist, The Artful Dodger, Pritt was inspired to make his first film, The King of The Beats. This became an underground hit and Inspired beat competitions all over the world. This led to Pritt making more films.
Pritt will be making a short film for the New Art Exchange.
About our partners
NEW ART EXCHANGE
New Art Exchange is the largest art centre in the UK dedicated to culturally diverse arts. Entry to exhibitions and events is FREE. Offering an exciting programme of culturally diverse arts for all, New Art exchange is located in Hyson Green, next to The Forest tram stop, less than ten minutes from the city centre.
Across the venue’s three gallery spaces you will see an ever-changing series of exhibitions showcasing the work of world renowned British and international artists. Alongside the exhibitions run a series of events that includes film screenings, festival days, creative family activities, live performances and workshops. New Art Exchange also offer free activities and workshops for children, families and young people every Saturday morning and during school holidays.
New Art Exchange has a CaféBar serving a delicious world food menu. Why not drop in and try their unique Fairtrade coffee, with beans sourced from India, Papua New Guinea, Brazil, Ethiopia and Indonesia.
SLANGUAGES
www.creativeml.ox.ac.uk/projects/slanguages
The Slanguages research project is part of Creative Multilingualism. Creative Multilingualism was an AHRC-funded project which ran from 2016 to 2020. It continues to exist as a TORCH research programme at the University of Oxford. This website offers many resources for anyone interested in exploring the links between creativity and languages, from blog posts and teaching materials, to details of the many projects and events we ran. For information about upcoming events, please visit the TORCH website. https://www.torch.ox.ac.uk/creative-multilingualism
KALA PHOOL
Kala Phool is a collaborative studio which develops and delivers a range of projects. These take place regionally, nationally, internationally and always in partnership with amazing people. Kala Phool and Slanguages are working together on a ‘Mother India Version 2’ project. The MIV2 project is being developed from a creative understanding of the popular Bollywood film Mother India (1957) which features a strong female character. Both Kala Phool and Slanguages would be happy to discuss this project further with the successful candidate whilst she is sourcing and developing her work along the Soho Road. There could also be an opportunity for the candidate’s work to feature as part of the MIV2 project.
The project is produced with Black Country Visual Arts and funded by Arts Council England