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Whitstable Biennale announced that the winners of its 2014 Open Submission Award are Louisa Martin and Rachel Reupke.

Rachel Reupke, film still from Wine and Spirits (2013)

Whitstable Biennial 2014 Open Submission Award

What the award means

The recipients of the cash prize win the opportunity to create a new work for Whitstable Biennale 2014 providing them with huge audiences. As well as funding for the work the artist receives developmental support from Biennale curators. . . but really this is only the beginning. . . .

Artists who have exhibited at Whitstable Biennale often go on to be hugely successful. Showing at the festival is now seen as a career stepping stone. This is perhaps why applications are received not just from around the UK but globally.

There were a massive two hundred and thirty two entries for this award. This is a very big number, given the amount of work involved in the application process and it also confirms and demonstrates a high level of interest in Whitstable Biennale amongst contemporary artists. It adds huge support to the idea that artists see the Biennale as something that will greatly benefit their careers. Whitstable Biennale regularly receives approaches from all over the world, Japan, India and the USA, this time there was an increase in entries from mainland Europe including Austria, Germany, Spain, and Poland.

The Winners

Rachel Reupke often works with film. The use of a static camera combined with precise art direction that employs the language of advertising make her films highly distinctive. The new 2014 Whitstable Biennale commission will be the first time Reupke has presented live performance to an audience.

Louisa Martin’s Whitstable Biennale commission will investigate the ‘performance of identity’ and look at ideas around intimate but non-physical human contact exploring the wider ramifications of living through digital images that are used to both construct and conceal identity.

The Whitstable Biennale effect

After showing at Whitstable Biennale, artists have been nominated for awards including: Art Angel Open commissions, The Jarman Award, Leverhulme Awards, South Bank Sky Arts Award, Cannes Film Festival awards, New York Film Festival awards.

Works commissioned by Whitstable Biennale have gone on to be shown at venues including Whitechapel Gallery, London; Serpentine Gallery, London; Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York; Imperial War Museum North; PKM, Seoul, Korea; Manifesta 9, Genk, Belgium; Modern Art Oxford; South London Gallery; British Film Institute; Bucharest Biennia, Romania; Art Unlimited, Basel; New Art Gallery, Walsall; Heidelberg Kunstverein, Germany; BAWAG Contemporary, Vienna, Austria, CCA Derry.

A number of artists we have previously commissioned, and artists we are working with in 2014, are currently included in Tate Britain’s prestigious survey show, Assembly: a survey of recent artists’ film and video in Britain 2008-2013, including Margaret Salmon, Mikhail Karikis, Clio Barnard, Rachel Reupke, Karen Mirza, Neil Henderson, Adam Chodzko, Cara Tolmie and Jananne Al-Ani.

Image: Rachel Reupke, film still from Wine and Spirits (2013). Courtesy Whitstable Biennale.

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