Somerset House is celebrating 25 years this year and is marking the occasion with a new initiative called Talent 25 which aims to help support the future superstars of art.
“We had an incredible amount of submissions of applicants across fashion, film, AI, tech, it was amazing,” says acclaimed artist Yinka Ilori, who was on the panel of judges, “What excites me is the UK and London in particular is bursting with talent and culture, and there's so much hunger to really change the world.”
Now the final five recipients of the Talent 25 scheme has been revealed, potentially world-changing new artists who will receive a bursary and professional development support.
They are enorê from Somerset House Studios, a Brazilian artist whose work spans various mediums, including 3D printed ceramics, textiles, digital media, and video; Identity 2.0 (Arda Awais and Savena Surana) from Somerset House Exchange, an interdisciplinary art project co-founded by Arda and Savena whose work focuses on making the concept of digital identity accessible and engaging for a broad audience; Piarve Wetshi from Black Business Residency, the co-founder and Editor-in-Chief of Colèchi, a Black-owned collective and research agency that focuses on sustainable development in fashion; Shanti Bell from Makerversity, an artist known for creating experiential sculptures that explore the relationship between sculpture and the human form and Tyreis Holder from Somerset House Studios, an artist, poet, and visual storyteller.
Ilori helped choose these recipients and will also be helping to support the artists throughout the scheme.
“It’s a huge honor to be part of Talent 25 as Somerset House are like family to me,” he says, “What they’ve managed to achieve for cultural scene of art, fashion design has been incredible and very instrumental for me, early on in my career. They commissioned me to do a number of projects, like Get Up Stand Up Now, which was curated by Zak Ové.
They've always been very supportive of emerging talent, and found ways to support that. So Talent 25 was very fitting for me because I understand the process and what it's like to be early in your career and want to get your work out into the public space.”
He says a lot of this is about confidence building, having an establishment like that believe in you and your work. This is something that will of course be transferred into the five artists on the scheme, who will have their work platformed; audiences will be able to see it for free at the Step Inside 25 weekend in September.
Yet there will also be more specialised teachings for the audiences to help them tackle some of the practical elements of the daunting art world.
“My role is to use my experience to support, advise, mentor,” he says, “Really building on the ideas of their projects, and then supporting them in things like budget management. There's so many things that go into starting a project. It’s a lot more than just, ‘here's the money’. How do you sustain this grant?
I've been creating work for over 10 years, and one of the things that I wish I’d had was someone to give me advice on how to manage money. From what I've learned in my journey, I think it's definitely important to understand that you are an artist, but also you are running a business. I will be with them, step by step, supporting them to see this commission through from the start to finish.”
This then, is about allowing the artists to have ownership over their own destinies, fomenting skills to manage growth, build teams and having a strategy. It’s the kind of less sexy stuff behind the scenes that is essential to producing the work that appears in galleries, and will give them a better chance to survive and thrive in an arts sector under strain from cuts and struggling for funding.
As to the artists themselves, Ilora takes us through them.
“Identity 2.0 is two artists, Arda Awais and Savena Surana, who and they're exploring digital memories and asking what what should happen when we die online. That really does interest me.
With Tyreis Holder, she is looking at textile portraits and wearable art. She's looking to innovate new ways of embedding narratives of care and trauma recovery in the textile piece, especially for women of Caribbean heritage.
Shanti Bell Shan is another I was excited by. I've seen her work previously where she did this performance using installation art and sculpture, during, Bianca Saunders' fashion show. She’s been exploring the crossover between sculpture and the human body, around themes of human connection, and the ever-evolving dynamics of family and personal relationships. It’s definitely fascinating.
And then enorê, who I also fell in love with, who will complete a research project exploring the potential of 3D clay printing as a performative medium. They aim to expand their practice beyond conventional object making by transforming the clay printer press into an active participant in time-based installations. I wonder what could come out of actually see her work go into a room, Art Basel or Design Miami.
The final one is Piarve Wetshi, who is on a mission to highlight how natural materials made from UK soil can become a, a valuable resource for the fashion and textile industry.”
It’s a breathtaking mix of fashion, sculpture, tech, sustainability, making it very much at the forefront of contemporary art. The place where Ilori loves to be.
“I’m definitely also getting inspired by these guys,” he says, “I’m going to be reaching out to some of them to do work projects with me. This also opens my eyes and I’m definitely feeling inspired by being part of Talent 25.”
As for Somerset House in general, well it’s going to be a nice long summer of celebrations of the venue. For Ilora, it’s the bravery of their programming which he most appreciates:
“They do things that might be risky, they're giving spaces and platforms to communities and people that might have felt like they had been forgotten.
Somerset House have always been celebrating, you know, different artists, creatives from different backgrounds, and you can see it again in Talent 25. It's such a diverse mix of stories, creatives, and that for me is what makes them amazing, and is also a true reflection of our country.”
