17 – 30 May 2021
Opening Hours: Monday – Sunday, 12:00 – 18:00
A showcase exhibition of two artists completing Acme’s early career programme.
EVENTS
Monday 17 May, 12:00 – 20:00: Opening Day (Artists present all day)
Thursday 20 May, 18:00 – 20:00: Oisín McKenna reading in response to Avril Corroon
Wednesday 26 May, 18:00 – 19:00: Online talk with Amy Steel & Claire Louise Bennett – Watch Here
Thursday 27 May, 18:00 – 20:00: Late opening
PEER presents the work of Avril Corroon and Amy Steel, two artists who completed a yearlong studio residency at Acme’s Warton House studios in 2020 after graduating from MA courses at London-based art colleges. The exhibition marks the fifth year of partnership between PEER and Acme. This important partnership offers emerging artists a significant opportunity at a crucial point in their career to exhibit at an acclaimed gallery and benefit from mentoring and guidance provided by PEER’s team.
Avril Corroon (Goldsmiths MFA Award, 2019/20) works across moving image, performance and sculpture to examine contemporary precarious living conditions including the housing crisis, wealth inequity and labour exploitation. Her work combines absurd humour and critique to form visual narratives, often incorporating ephemeral materials such as fragrances, sticky floors, damp and leftover food. These feature to activate sense of touch and smell, examining notions of taste and class using bodily communication. For many of her moving image and performances she activates existing architecture as analogical of power structures by climbing or intervening in the site, usually inaccessible areas like rooftops. The act of rising to the sky or performing from above is symbolic to overcoming, or indeed becoming a hierarch.
Amy Steel (Adrian Carruthers Award, 2019/20) combines painting and performance to create expansive, sensual environments where women unravel and explore themes such as sexuality, creativity and the desire to be part of something bigger. Fascinated by the complex relationships humans have with nature, Steel’s dream-like paintings often feature animals and female body parts, which meld into the mysterious and luminous landscapes. This luminosity is translated through Steel’s specific use of colour, through which she creates an atmosphere that is charged with emotion. The paintings are pointedly ambiguous, enabling the viewer to sense the work and react emotionally rather than by responding to an overly prescriptive narrative.
Acme’s early career programme provides artists in their first five years of practice with a variety of support structures, including financial subsidy, rent relief, professional development, mentoring, presentation and exhibition opportunities. The programme aims to make a substantial intervention at critical moments in artists’ careers, as they transition from the supportive environment of an arts institution into lifelong professional practice.
The Goldsmiths MFA Award is a partnership between Acme and Goldsmiths, University of London and generously supported by Jane Hamlyn. The Adrian Carruthers Award is a partnership between Acme and The Slade School of Fine Art and is generously supported by the family of Adrian Carruthers.
Avril Corroon received an MFA from Goldsmiths, University of London in 2019 and BA in Fine Art Media from NCAD (2014). She has three upcoming exhibitions at Mother’s Tankstation, London and The Feminist Supermarket at Ormston House, Limerick in 2021 and TACO!, London in 2022. Recent solo exhibitions include Spoiled Spores curated by Sheena Barrett at The LAB, Dublin (2019) and Just Do It at Ormond Studios, Dublin (2014). Her work has been exhibited and screened at Work in Progress at South London Gallery (2020), Forming a Residency Association at Lux (2020), The Old Operating Theatre, (2019), Enclave, London (2018), My Brilliant Friend curated by Rayne Booth at Temple Bar Gallery & Studios, Dublin (2016). She is a 2020 recipient of the Next Generation Award from Arts Council Ireland.
Amy Steel completed her MFA in 2019 from the Slade School of Fine Art and her BA from Goldsmiths University London in 2015. Amy was awarded the ACME Post Graduate Studio Award in 2019. Selected shows include: (solo) Niru Ratnam Gallery, London (2021); Visions, curated by Benedict Drew, Nunnery Gallery, London (2020); FBA Futures, Mall Galleries, London (2019); Ripe Beings, White Crypt, London (2019); Bite, Barbican Arts Trust Group, London (2018); Holiday, ARCADE (pop up), London (2018); Drip Dry, Chalton Gallery, London (2018); Up River, Centre for Contemporary Art, Bulgaria (2017); Arte Laguna, Nappe Arsenale, Venice (2016); New Performers, Toynbee Studios, London (2015); Salirpohilia, Arcadia Missa, London (2013)
For further press information, please contact rosa@peeruk.org
