We are happy to announce another group of artists to join Futures this year. The five artists were nominated by the British Journal of Photography. They are Billy Barraclough, Silvana Trevale, Matthieu Croizier, Tayo Adekunle and Sophie Gladstone.
They will join the platform’s activities to present their work to international professionals and to network, amongst other opportunities that will be developed for them, including exhibitions, publishing opportunities, portfolio reviews, and more.
Discover more about them:
Sophie Gladstone
Sophie Gladstone is a photographer based in London.
“After finishing my undergraduate studies in 2018, I have continued my art practice while working in editorial positions. My work has been exhibited in both Europe and Asia and I was recently shortlisted for the Emergentes International Photography Award and nominated for the Foam Paul Huf Award. Currently I work as Assistant Photography Editor at Wallpaper, a luxury design-focused publication. This role feeds back into my photography, informing a critical perspective as I work across the reality and fantasy of contemporary visual culture. Aesthetics of advertising, social media and e-commerce are also inspiration points. Through my practise I perform the capitalist pressures that undermine positive traits within us, such as the desire to improve ourselves and connect with others.
Matthieu Croizier
Matthieu Croizier (1994) is an artist and freelance photographer based in Lausanne, Switzerland. He graduated from the Photography School of Vevey (CEPV) in 2017 and from the Bachelor Photography at ECAL in 2020. Using photography as a tool, he tries to turn reality into fantasy, or the other way around, and to blur the line that separates what is considered normal from what is not. In his work, he is mainly interested in the representation of the human body and seeks the tension between opposing notions, as the friction from beauty to ugly, from fascination to repulsion or from ordinary to spectacular.
He is one of the laureates of the Carte Blanche Students 2020, organized by Paris Photo, Picto Foundation and SNCF Gare & Connexions.
Silvana Trevale
Silvana is a Photographer born and raised in Caracas, Venezuela. Her portrait-based work is a fusion between documentary and fashion, where she explores her Latin American roots within both spectrums. The escalating crisis in her home country of Venezuela has motivated her to produce Trevale’s ongoing recent piece “Venezuelan Youth”. Which has been widely exhibited, notably at her solo show at ThePrintSpace in London and at Vogue Italia’s Photo Vogue Festival this year. Through the progress in her MA, she has taken a closer look at the women of her family. As her work carries a nostalgic density towards her home and family, she returned to her childhoods memories and recent events. By collaborating with her grandmother Rosa and mother Maria, she explores the past of her great grandmother Cayetana. With the intention to celebrate her bravery as an indigenous woman and her roots. By, observing the Latin essence the women of her life grew up with.
Billy Barraclough
Billy Barraclough (b.1994) is a photographic artist based in London. Directed by his curiosity in the relationship between people and their environment, his work to date has explored ideas around identity, emotion and personal history. A common thread throughout his practice is an interest in the metaphorical potential of photographs. His project, ‘John’s Notebooks’ (2020-2021), pulls on the symbolism present with the landscape of the home to touch on the emotions and memories connected to the childhood loss of his father. Whereas his most recent work ‘Murmurations’ (2020-21), employs the starling murmuration as a symbol to reflect on the current global crisis and the act of coming together and converging as a group.
Barraclough is a recent graduate of the MA Photography programme at Bristol UWE and is due to exhibit his master’s project, ‘John’s Notebooks’, at the 2021 Bristol Photo Festival.
Tayo Adekunle
Tayo Adekunle is a British Nigerian photographer based in Edinburgh. Working a lot with self-portraiture, she uses her work to explore issues surrounding race, gender and sexuality as well as racial and colonial history. Her work is centred around reworkings of historical tropes relating to the black female body, taking from contexts that include art historical paintings and sculptures as well as 19th century colonial photography. She works to subvert established notions about black female sexuality and the standard of beauty ascribed to black females. By placing historical imagery in a contemporary context, the relationship between the treatment of the black female body in the past and its treatment in the present day is explored. Since graduating from Edinburgh College of Art with a BA (Hons) in Photography, she has been a recipient of the SSA New Graduate Award and the Degree Show Purchase Prize, resulting in her work becoming part of The University of Edinburgh Art Collection.
