Freedman Foundation Travelling Scholarship Exhibition 2016

Think about the possibilities presented by three months to live and focus on your practice in city like Paris or New York or alternatively the wild west of Marfa, Texas. Offering support for international travel, residencies or sustained research, the Freedman Travelling Scholarships are a generous and timely investment in an early career artists professional trajectory. 

Now in their 16th year, The Freedman Foundation Travelling Scholarships are some of the most prestigious grants offered by the National Association for the Visual Arts (NAVA), and provide talented young artists with $5,000 each to undertake formal study or to participate in a residency or a planned professional development program internationally.

The Freedman Travelling Scholarship for Emerging Artists is founded on the idea that international experience and mentorship, both formal and informal, are pivotal to young emerging artists’ careers. Established in 2000, the Freedman Foundation has so far provided grants to 78 emerging artists to expand or enrich their studio practice with experience abroad.

Each year the new recipients and previous awardees are celebrated with an exhibition. For the second year this annual showcase will also be curated by the most recent recipient of the Freedman Foundation Curatorial Scholarship, Emily Sullivan. This equally visionary Curatorial Scholarship is offered through the Masters of Curating and Cultural Leadership program at UNSW Art & Design.

In 2016 Emily has curated an exhibition featuring work by ten 2016 and 2014 scholarship recipients. Conceived to be multi-disciplinary the exhibition spans photography, film, sculpture, sound, light, installation and new forms of technology and explores place and displacement, referring back to the history of the individual disciplines as well as broader art historical contexts.

The exhibition also includes works developed during their travels by the returning scholars from 2014; Ella Condon who participated in a three-month long residency at The New School / Parsons in New York; Michelle Day who is currently completing a two-year Masters degree at Chiang Mai University, Thailand; Kelley Stapleton travelled to the Chinati Foundation in Marfa (Texas), New York and Chicago; Katie Turnbull who undertook a three-week residency in the Arctic Circle run by The Farm Inc; and Brenton Smith who was awarded the Skammdagi artist in residency in north Iceland.

The 2016 Freedman Scholarship recipients are; Alice Couttoupes who will participate in a two-month long residency at the Cité internationale des Arts in Paris and exhibit at the Bernardaud Foundation in Limoges; Brigitte Hart is travelling to Limpopo, South Africa for a workshop with pioneering sound artist Francisco Lopez drawing on acoustic ecology and socio-politics; Olivia Koh will travel to Manila in the Philippines, to undertake an artist residency at Green Papaya alongside a mentorship with founding artists Noberto Roldan and Merv Espina that reconsiders the use of social and retail space in Quezon City; Anna McMahon is also undertaking a residency at the Cité internationale des Arts in Paris where she will research the idea of failure and paradoxical idea of ordering nature in the context of the Jardin à la Française, she will then go on to complete a mentorship with Agatha Gothe-Snape in Tokyo, followed by the first half of Documenta 14, to be presented in Athens; and Georgia Saxelby will undertake a two-month mentorship in New York with landscape architect Julia Watson, considered an international expert in sacred space. To mark the presentation of their awards, the artists will show work relating to their primary ideas and travel destinations.
 
The 2016 exhibition will be opened by Blair French, Director, Curatorial & Digital at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, 5-7pm Wednesday 12 October 2016 at UNSW Galleries, corner Oxford St and Greens Rd Paddington.
 
About the Freedman Foundation

The Freedman Foundation is a private philanthropic organisation, which donates funding to the visual arts, music, medicine and science. Each year, several emerging Australian artists are supported by the Freedman Foundation to travel overseas and gain inspiration and guidance in the development of their art practice.
 
Since the Freedman Foundation Travelling Scholarship’s inception in 2000, this generous program has contributed $380,000 to more than 75 artists to aid in their professional career development through travel.