ART from HEART is excited to announce the Winners of the Artist of the Month - May 2022!
4 Artists, 4 Mediums, 4 Countries:
Alessia Sissa - Photography - Italy
Alex Long Yuan - Sculpture & Installation - China
Helen Bradbury - Painting & Printmaking - Northern Ireland
George Sfougaras - Printmaking - Greece
The competition is open to multimedia artists worldwide and created to showcase, promote and raised the visibility of the work of emerging and mid-career artists. The winners are featured on our website and social media platforms and considered for any upcoming curatorial projects by ART from HEART. Artworks are selected based on creativity, originality, quality of work, and overall artistic ability.
Apply NOW to get featured in June 2022!
Increase your outreach, visibility, & artist profile!
Alessia Sissa - Fine Art Photography - Italy
© Alessia Sissa, All Rights Reserved.
Top Left to Right: Florealism; Smell of Spring Camellia
Bottom Left to Right: Smell of Spring Rose; The Catch
Media: Digital Photography
Alessia Sissa is a fine art photographer and visual artist based in Leamington Spa, in the heart of Warwickshire. Born in Italy, she grew up surrounded by the classical beauty of Rome and the wild nature of Sardinia. Her curiosity for art and nature played a fundamental role in shaping her personality. Her focus and experience in photography started more than a decade ago as a passion during her travels, becoming soon part of her daily life and finally her job.
Alessia's art expresses a continuous search for anything emotional and unusual. She captures the world around her, playing with her imagination and creating unique and intimate images where the ordinary becomes extraordinary, in a surreal way thus challenging our idea of reality.
I am a painter who uses lenses instead of brushes.
Alessia is passionate about natural light, finding inspiration in the shapes and colours of natural and human worlds. She likes to preserve as much as possible of the original image, minimising the postproduction editing. All her works come to life in the real world without using digital manipulation to create them. No shoot is complete until it is properly printed.
Alessia considers printing a key part of her work. The choice of material, size and printing techniques is a fundamental part of her creative process.
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Alex Long Yuan - Sculpture & Installation - Shanghai, China
© Alex Long Yuan, All Rights Reserved.
Top Left to Right: Pavilion I; Pavilion II
Bottom Left to Right: Breath; Huge Ring
Media: Sculpture & Installations
Alex Long Yuan is a multidisciplinary artist based in London and Shanghai. He centres his research on humans’ living state in modern times and the relationships between humans and nature, humans and humans across cultures. He is in a quest to find the most suitable form of expression through a variety of interdisciplinary research and artistic experiments, so as to discuss and explore in-depth how humans can best live in harmony with the blue planet and what would their rebuilt future look like if humans put their civilization as relics in the infinite dimension of the universe.
In this era of post-globalization, the global butterfly effect caused by unrestrained human activities and individuals has not only brought about positive effects, but also caused immeasurable trauma and side effects.
Adept at the artistic expression in public spaces and inter-media creation, Alex Long Yuan work probes into multiple challenges; confronting humans and nature in the Anthropogenic age.
PAVILION I & II
Pavilion is about using the garden as a carrier to probe and discuss the relationship between humans and nature against the cross-culture context in the Anthropocene era. In the course of human civilization, the garden has always played a significant role between nature and society. In the eye of the universe, human history appears to happen in a twinkling. The nature we love, destroy and cherish may be a relic in this dimension, running into an unforeseeable era. When we try to maintain and rebuild the ecological system in our way, are we truly able to get green back?
BREATH
Breath is inspired by the climate change issue which has drawn public concern right now. As we know, plants mitigate global warming through photosynthesis—by absorbing carbon dioxide and releasing oxygen, plants help the earth breathe. The ability to soak up carbon dioxide and fix it in plants or soil, thereby reducing its concentration in the atmosphere is called Carbon Sink. However, as the global temperature keeps rising, this kind of valuable ability of plants has been increasingly undermined. Breath is an art installation that can sense the carbon dioxide concentration around plants. Its lights are green when the CO2 concentration is on the normal level, but if the concentration rises, the lights will turn into red, a colour indicating danger. Scattered around plants, the spherical lights keep flickering to visualize the breath of plants for visitors.
HUGE RING
Huge Ring conveys a dual-message: on one hand, the giant ring made of plastic wastes is an authentic presentation of the marine plastic issue. Plastics, a result of modern civilization, has endangered the lives of countless creatures when they float in the ocean currents, forming garbage patches. The reflection in the mirror of the work also serves as a visual metaphor, symbolizing the epitome of the consumption era and the throw-away culture, and roaring ruthlessly towards the global ecology. On the other hand, the whole process of the creation of Huge Ring shows a virtuous cycle of plastics use: from the beginning of the collecting of plastic products, to the creation of the installation (Reuse). After the exhibition, the installation will disintegrate and its materials will enter the recycling cycle (instead of being discarded completely into the environment).
Artistic creations are not just about materials or components but the conceptual meaning injected by a series of events or the process of creation into them to make them more enduring and powerful.
In accordance with the requirements of his works and projects, Alex Long Yuan often cooperate with people and organizations with different backgrounds, including scientists, ornithologists, NGOs, museum, etc. Alex Long Yuan graduated with Distinction in MA Fine Art Sculpture from Camberwell College of Arts London in 2021 and received a MA in painting at Shanghai Academy of Fine Arts, Shanghai University. His work has been widely exhibited including China Arts Museum, Shanghai Science & Technology Museum, Shanghai International Convention Center, Shen Zhen World Exhibition& Convention, 20tion Center, West Bund Art Center, Hannah Peschar Sculpture Garden, South London Gallery, Saatchi Gallery, to name a few.
Alex Long Yuan was Selected ArtConnect's Artists to Watch 2022!
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Helen Bradbury - Painting & Printmaking - Northern Ireland
© Helen Bradbury, All Rights Reserved.
Top Left to Right: IMG Blown into Oblivion; CURIAROSCURO
Bottom Left to Right: RIPTIDE; MACROSCOPE
Media: Painting & Printmaking
Helen Bradbury was born in 1963, in the Midlands England and moved to Northern Ireland soon after obtaining a 1st class hons degree from Wolverhampton College of Art in 1987, specialising in painting and printmaking. She has evolved a socially engaged creative practice alongside the development of her own work in the studio.
Spanning 3 decades Helen has created and shared her work with numerous and diverse communities across Ireland, creating projects which have engaged people from health, education and community bodies- helping them to find "their voice" through the creative process. This opportunity has given her greater understanding and connection to the many communities she has worked with over this time. This dual practice has grounded her artwork and has also led to invitations to work on privately commissioned pieces for individuals and corporate bodies establishing a personal link with each work, specific to person and place.
My often, elemental paintings are influenced by a relationship of people to place, where a constant movement of natural forces and manmade intervention creates a shifting dialogue within a landscape.
Geographical influences and those of natural life cycles work constantly to alter the shape, texture and colour of where we live., developing the narrative of a landscape which appears and disappears geographically through sedimentation and erosion. As with genetics, traits can lie forgotten, sometimes to re-emerge over time, creating a resonant dialogue between the landscape and the people who inhabit it.
Helen has exhibited her work extensively in the UK. In 1994 she started working regularly with Arts Care in Northern Ireland where she evolved and nurtured creative practice in healthcare environments and helping people with learning difficulties, disabilities and chronic illness. It remains an important part of her activity.
Helen's community projects enabled her to establish a working relationship with the Arts Council of Northern Ireland’s Artists in Schools Programme, which extended her practice province wide. Simultaneously, she developed educational links with Dublin National Gallery, Downpatrick Museum and Banbridge College of Further Education, as a creative support in their outreach programmes. Helen is a creative facilitator in Paint, Paper and Film.
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George Sfougaras - Printmaking - Greece
© George Sfougaras, All Rights Reserved.
Triptych entitled Ghosts of Empires Past, Present, and Future
Media Printmaking
George Sfougaras is a contemporary British Greek artist, based in Leicester, England. His work is concerned with memory, identity, and the impact of history on the present.
Sfougaras printed works explore issues of human migration, change and cultural inheritance through representational art which draws on cultural symbols and archival research. Cultural Geography and History are significant sources of inspiration as well as broader global events at the intersection of politics, geography and religion. His work often delves into the past to find a thread that connects with current events.
It was essential for me to respond to the current conflict in Europe. Soviet Union political posters created powerful narratives to elicit loyalty and belief in a particular set of values. Referencing the propaganda poster form, I carved a triptych of 60 x120 cm comprising three prints of 40 x60 cm entitled Ghosts of Empires Past, Present, and Future.
Ghosts of Empires Past
In the first one of the triptych, the Soviet manipulation of the Ukrainian wheat crop and resulting famine are shown. An expectant mother (Ukraine) forces Lenin to consume the wheat grains, whilst a military convoy poses in typical soviet art fashion. On the opposing side, the Holodomor statue (The Ukrainian famine) looks on.
Ghosts of Empires Present
In the second panel, the poses have been derived from an illustration from Pilgrim's progress illustrated by the Reed brothers in 1892 but altered to reference the iniquitous nature of the war in Ukraine. The machinery of war is everywhere in the background.
Ghosts of Empires Future
In the third panel, the young girl in the Holodomor memorial is more prevalent, symbolising the impact on the children for years to come. Black sea workmen repair the beleaguered city of Mariupol as a soviet era group welcome everyone as brothers. In the background, a setting sun…or a nuclear explosion lights up the horizon; the future is unclear.
Sfougaras has worked and exhibited internationally, in collaboration with a network of partners. In 2017 he established the Focus on Identity International Collective, a group of 19 artists from 12 various European and Middle Eastern countries. He is a member of the Leicester Society of Artists and the Leicester Print Workshop.
Sfougaras was joint winner of ‘Small Print International‘2016 and Leicester Cank Street Open 2018. Winner of ‘Ideas on Paper’ Midlands Printers Open 2016 with a pre-1922 reconstructed map of the destroyed city of Smyrna. Shortlisted for the Freedom.org ‘Depicting Human Rights’ Washington DC, in 2017, for the print ‘Songs from my Father’. His work has been highly commended by Sock Gallery (2019) and Leicester Society of Artists (2020). He has created print based and multimedia installations, most recently (2021) at Leicester Museum, within the German Expressionist Gallery.
Sfougaras Academic Qualifications include a BA (Hons) FA, PGCE (Distinction) ATD (Distinction) MBA Ed, AST (Advanced Skills Teacher) NPQH (Secondary Headteacher). Long Distance: Behavioural Genetics; Environmental Management.
Sfougaras work is in the permanent collection of the Leicester Museum and in private collections in Germany, Israel, Greece, Australia, Spain, USA and South Africa.
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Apply NOW for an opportunity to get featured in June 2022
Increase your outreach, visibility, & raise your artist profile!