Before 2016 the ABF, the Artists’ Benevolent Fund gave grants to visual artists and makers in any medium and some of their work is shown here.
Keef Winter
Keef Winter creates sculpture and installations in an extraordinary range of materials. In May 2015 he put on a solo exhibition at the House of St Barnabas in Soho. ‘It is an exclusive members club that houses rotating curated shows throughout the beautiful Victorian complex’. Winter made two large sculptures for the club’s ‘Garden Space’, called ‘Centre Point’. They refer to the modernist high-rise building that is in clear view from the garden.
Laura Spark
After completing a degree in Drama, Laura Spark began to explore different ways of telling stories. She was attracted to stop-motion animation techniques and has now established herself successfully in this field. The ABF award helped her replace and update her camera and equipment allowing her to produce work of a high technical standard.
Tristram Aver
Tristram Aver is an artist and curator working in the East Midlands. He uses innovative painting and installation techniques to explore late Eighteenth/early Nineteenth century references to ‘Britishness’ as found in landscapes, animal portraits, pastoral scenes and wallpaper designs. His images bring these icons into contact with the present – a world saturated by advertising slogans, technology and the internet.
Michael Forbes
A fine art photographer for over 10 years, Michael Forbes is inspired to make art that explores his personal and cultural experience as an African Caribbean man. ‘Souls of the Diaspora’ is a photo documentary project on teenagers – their interactions, peer pressure, fashion and their bodies. It is a good example of the themes that dominate Forbes’ work: education, poverty, race, masculinity, fashion, wealth and the nature of success.
Nicholas Bush
Using traditional media to create large scale oil paintings, Nicholas Bush works from his immediate surroundings. He makes sketchbook drawings and notes of the East Sussex landscape through direct observation and memory.
Carwyn Evans
Carwyn Evan’s practice ranges over mixed media, photography and installation. Rooted in his personal and cultural experiences, the work reaches out to broader social and political change. Much of his work focuses on generational migration from rural to urban environments and the impact this has on the individual lives of these ‘internal emigres’.
Chris Jennings
Chris Jennings is a painter who has also worked in many different media: photography; film and three-dimensional media. The relationship between two – and three-dimensional work has been of key importance to his practice. The initial concepts for his paintings are often prepared with small wooden maquettes. He has collaborated on many occasions with composers, choreographers and musicians. Much of his recent work has evolved from studying the forms, and pictorial language of early Renaissance painting, particularly Duccio.
George Hardy
George Hardy has been drawing since he was old enough to pick up a pencil. He began by drawing people, cartoons and dinosaurs. Following study at the University of Lincoln and work in galleries and as an assistant to a sculptor, he continues to draw people, cartoons and dinosaurs. His portraits of people he knows well are particularly striking. Drawn to a large scale they represent a technical tour de force in the use of biro.
Chloë Laycock
Chloë Laycock graduated with a BA (Hons) in Fine Art from Nottingham Trent University in 2018. Her research based practice is centred on the rescuing of ancestral voices, utilising the archive and the gaps left in the official records to build narratives. By reflecting on the ancient practice of oral history she treats the gaps in the archives as a lapse in memory, using film and writing to find ways of replicating the mechanics that aide in the act of storytelling. The ABF award helped her to buy equipment to document and produce work to a high professional standard.
Anna Rogers & Gweni Lloyd
Anna Rogers graduated with a BA (Hons) in Fine Art from Cardiff School of Art and Design in 2017. Her practice is an ongoing exploration of fragmented environments and the relationship of the architectural and geometric to the natural and biometric.
Gweni Lloyd graduated with a BA (Hons) in Fine Art from Cardiff School of Art and Design in 2018. Her practice explores sensory themes through the use of both video and physical mediums.
The ABF award allowed both Rogers and Lloyd to develop their practices by providing them with the opportunity to undertake international research trips, as well as allowing them to buy equipment.