Salon Contemporary is a vibrant hot-bed and network for new talent, carefully selected by director Samir Ceric from the UK's leading art schools, offering an array of original works that explode onto the art market with refreshing vivacity. Keep up to date with this blog for news on current competitions, future exhibitions and all the exciting projects the Salon staff have been up to!
Artist of The Week runner up Helen Gorrill at SAATCHI ONLINE.
Handprinted ball-gagged pope series with tiny individual confessions. On exhibition at Salon Contemporary, Notting Hill London until 30th January 2011 (and whilst there you're invited to submit your own, anonymous confession to be part of my huge confessional quilt!)
The team at Salon Contemporary wanted to wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a prosperous and Happy New Year! It’s been an exciting year and with the launch of Debut Contemporary, 2011 is looking more exciting than ever. Please check our new website www.debutcontemporary.com which was launched a couple of days ago and will be completed with the selected artists and online shop in the run up to the February launch. Pass on the information to any ambitious and talented artists you may know and urge them to apply for a mentoring scheme place asap as we are already half way through the full occupancy.
As I am sure you all know, this month's exhibition in Salon Contemporary consists of four female artists.
Therefore we've been feeling the girl power to get us through this icy-cold month, eagerly awaiting for christmas to arrive so that we can get warm and cosy with our loved ones over a giant turkey!
It's not often that female artist's get the recognition that they deserve, so to showcase four talents at once raises the bar even higher and awareness of raw talent amongst women.
So here at Salon Contemporary, it could be partly due to the weather conditions (:S) or just simply because we have 'girl-fever' going on, but we're obsessed with this four-piece, girl band called WARPAINT.
Described by the BBC as the sound of 2011 and by matching the moods inside the gallery and the temperature outside, Warpaint is an experimental art rock group from Los Angeles, who formed in 2004 on Valentine's Day.
The band played in the LA area for three years, gaining fans and writing songs such as "Stars", "Beetles", and "Elephants", which would eventually comprise their debut EP, Exquisite Corpse. Take a listen to it.
We loved all of their songs but we wanted to play you a favorite of ours called 'Undertow'.
The album might be slightly meloncholic but the soft melodies and gentle build up leave us wanting to hear more.
Discussing Helen Gorrill's "Benedict Re-bound Confession"
Salon Contemporary was thrilled to announce Celina Langen as the first winner of our new and very exciting ‘Curator of the Month’ competition launched back in November. ‘Curator of the Month’ offers young talents the chance to curate an exhibition of the nation’s aspiring contemporary artists in the artistic hub of Notting Hill.
Celina took this in her grasp, curating a magnificent exhibition comprising of works by previous Artist of the Week Winners, Helen Gorrill, the art collective Akleriah, Dragana Jurisic and Alyona Larionova; the preview night being a late night opening of Salon Contemporary for the First Wednesdays event, a very well received launch at the beginning of the month.
Celina discussed what her ideal exhibition would be to curate, her ideas about the emerging contemporary art within London and how the wealth of promising talent from graduates every year enables new possibilties in terms of curation and also the experience of indefinite types of artwork.
Due to the success of this show, the exhibition has been extended until Januray 30th 2011 until DEBUT Contemporary is launched early next year.
Following the success of the recent Artist of the Week programme, Salon Contemporary has introduced a thrilling competition for all the budding, creative and visionary curators out there!
This Wednesday will see the return of our first ‘Curator of the Month’ winner CELINA LANGEN, who will grace Salon gallery once more to give a very special Curator’s talk.
As a result of the competition, Celina has helped to curate the Artist of the Week exhibition, a show filled with talented, contemporary artists, all winners of the Artist of the Week competition held by Salon Contemporary, with First Wednesdays as its opening night. In a recent interview Celina shared with us the excitement of being involved with the exhibition 'Who Knows Tomorrow' at the museum Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin “Displaying contemporary African art in the German capital was not only an exciting aesthetic endeavour but also had tangible political significance“.
With such experiences behind her, the Curator’s talk on Wednesday evening will be a perfect way to meet our Curator of the month and see what interesting news, artistic approaches and possibilities she has to offer.
Despite the cold weather, four Artist of the Week winners; Akleriah, Alyona Larionova, Dragana Jurisic and Helen Gorrill had a very successful opening night at Salon Contemporary.
Helen Gorrill’s “Selling Olga”, consisting of prosthetic limbs hanging provocatively in the window, were a sure fire way to catch peoples’ attention. Akleriah, a Russian performance group with theatrical tendencies and a vast array of works ranging from dresses, hats, jewellery, and some eye catching sculptural textile pieces draped across the gallery wall. Dragana Jurisic’s beautiful photography “A Bird in the Head” welcomed you into the basement, adorning the walls with dreamy imagery, set aside from Alyona Larionova’s installation. Larionova develops two films projected onto opposing walls, engulfed by an organic, fluid curtain enveloping her space. To begin with, it appears as a tool to block out light in order to enhance the projected films when in actual fact it establishes a threshold into the environment, acting as a vertical structure predominantly consuming the space around her work as a direct message to the viewer that she presides as a single unit, away from Dragana’s illustrative photography.
Alex Mazzitelli also came along and warmed the night with his special home made eggnog in his duck man suit. Samir Ceric, the director of Salon Gallery, announced the final winner of Artist of the Week and it was… Alyona Larionova! After winning the public vote as well, she was ecstatic! Everyone had a fantastic night including the four artists’ friends and family. It was definitely one of the most dynamic previews Salon Contemporary has had. The exhibition will be on for a month so if you have missed the preview, drop by and have a browse around the amazing show. Some great photographs and films were recorded last night these will be up on our website and flickr in next few days so watch out for the space.
Photograph taken by Mark Dolman at Salon Contemporary Works by Akleriah and Helen Gorrill
