Tuesday, September 23, 2014

Tina Jenkins wins Threadneedle Prize 2014

Winner of the Threadneedle Prize 2014
Tina Jenkins with her painting "Bed Head"
Gloss paint and acrylic on plastic sheeting
170 x 170 x 8cm
£3,950 (sold)
Tina Jenkins won The Threadneedle Prize 2014 this evening. The prize was announced at the Awards Dinner held this evening at the Mall Galleries. It's so late this is going to be a bit of an image oriented post.

Tina wins a £20,000 cash prize and a solo show to be held at the Mall Galleries in 2015. She's also sold her winning painting "Bed Head"

I was sat right next to her all the way through dinner and I can honestly say she was one very surprised lady when the prize was announced.

Tina Jenkins receives her award
However I understand from the judge who was sat on my other side that she was one of two strong frontrunners from the outset - because her work is so very different.

Tina Jenkins with the very heavy Threadneedle Prize 2014!

It's worth repeating her statement about her relationship with painting and her analysis of its practice on her Saatchi website
Who is painting? And why does it holler so? How does it operate? And who hears its call? Something hangs between us on the outside of painting, some thing that is both of painting and beyond it. It hangs in the interval between all that it is and all that it is not, between the finite and the infinite and emerges from the already determined historical context of painting that always prefigures itself. This is the subject of desire that emerges from past incarnations, is situated in the present and continually opens out onto an elsewhere. This something, this subjectivity desire or excess is not a universal given. It manifests and situates itself at the site of each and every painting anew. Gesture, medium, support and tools are all protagonists here; there is no singular truth to be defined only a multitude of convoluted relationships in continuous motion. Navigating this painterly terrain has become an increasingly complex process as painting continues to structure and critique itself around that which is already inscribed in its psyche and yet continues to desire that which has yet to be defined. It is this contradiction within the place of painting that interests me and drives my practice forward. The subjective space that sits between the stability of these traditional conceptualizations of painting and the increasingly hysterical acts that it activates through the gestural in order to continue to affirm itself mobilizes a relentlessly affirmative force-of-thought. By re- conceptualizing current and historical thinking around the subject of hysteria and painting and re-considering the implications of mark making and gestural determinations within that discourse I hope through my practice to make some sort of analysis of paintings current condition by questioning paintings symbolic title. Lacan identifies hysteria with neurosis. It refers to the gap between the subjects’ direct psychological identity and its symbolic title that is always historically determined. Henri Bergson’s ideas around intuition as a productive force that occurs only when the present is approached through traditional methods that in reproduction exhaust themselves and are therefore unable to present new concepts of representation is central here. Through emergent and imprecise motions intuition acts by negating the old and resisting the temptations to understand the new in terms of the language and concepts of the old. Philosophy, for Bergson, does not consist in choosing between concepts and in taking sides. These concepts and positions result from the normal or habitual way our intelligence works. Intuition therefore is experiential. Bergsonian intuition consists of entering into the thing, rather than going around it from the outside, a seizing of the self from within. This is the space I paint in.

The Threadneedle Prize Awards Dinner 2014

7 comments:

  1. Interesting paintings, especially the way she breaks up known ´paintings and poses.A worthy winner. But the artists statement is too " artsy" for me- just the example of too much talk and though. Just what critics of conceptual art like to critisize- words without real meaning. But it may also be me missunderstanding as english is not my language.;-)

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  2. It's part of her dissertation for her MA.

    We had a discussion about it this morning. She agrees with me that words for academia should be kept in dissertations and words for the public need to be more accessible.

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  3. Lovely painting, worthy winner, but the statement is totally unreadable. Why are artists statements generally so bemusingly badly written? I don't think we should be made to feel stupid for not understanding it either, I think the job of a statement is to communicate not confuse and baffle.

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  4. Her interview was so lovely and her work is really unusual, in a good way,
    I feel mean for being so negative about her statement, maybe she could write more like she speaks.

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  5. That's what I said to her - she's a really lovely lady.

    I said websites are like presentations of any kind by anybody in any venue. Bottom line they boil down to what six things do you want to say and for people to remember - and you start from that.

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  6. That's what I said to her - she's a really lovely lady.

    I said websites are like presentations of any kind by anybody in any venue. Bottom line they boil down to what six things do you want to say and for people to remember - and you start from that.

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  7. Then I understand better if her statement is a part if her academic work ;-)! I agree that it would benefit her art if she could write about it, and her process, in a more " un- academic" way for the public. That does not mean that she would have to throw away any of her thoughts about her painting, just write about it in, as you write, a more accessible way. I wish her all good luck in the future!

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