Katerina Eleftheriadou | Riikka Enne | Maite Pinto

This summer Castlefield Gallery and Manchester School of Art will launch a new collaboration. The first in a series, the school and gallery will support a biennial exhibition to showcase some of the most promising work being produced by MA and MFA Fine Art graduates from Manchester School of Art. In 2018 those selected to participate have graduated with MAs and MFAs from the school within the last two years.

Following a competitive application process and selection by Castlefield Gallery Curator, Matthew Pendergast and Programme Leader of MA/MFA Fine Art at Manchester School of Art, Ian Rawlinson, the exhibiting artists will include Katerina Eleftheriadou, Riikka Enne and Maite Pinto.  The artists will develop new work, or build on existing interests, for a group exhibition to open in July 2018. The practices brought together in this exhibition are distinct, yet all three artists will bring their contemporary international perspectives to the gallery.

Pinto will build upon the Kindness of Strangers, an ongoing project working with archive material relating to the Spanish Civil War and in particular, from the Basque Children Association of ‘37. In 1937 almost 4,000 children travelled to Britain on the steamship Habana. The children were cared for by numerous organisations and individuals in the UK with some remaining indefinitely. For Pinto the project marks both a personal and historical link between Spain and England, and it is particularly poignant in the context of current world politics.

A new piece of work by Eleftheriadou inspired by the strong smells used in the recipes of her mother’s and grandmother’s dishes will form an immersive installation in the gallery, coming together and mixing as if performing a form of abstract cookery. Though the work will reference her own past, the artist is interested in the transnational experience of people living far from where they grew up, and the power of our senses in their ability to, with an instant, transport us to another place.

Enne’s sculptures are made from found objects, often those that have been abandoned in the immediate area the artist is living and working in. The objects are carefully selected based on their particular sculptural qualities, the stories they might allude to or the situation in which they were found. Enne will respond directly to the exhibition space at Castlefield Gallery.