MOSTYN: Open 21 / Elisabetta Benassi: EMPIRE

MOSTYN Open 21
Selected from over 750 submissions from across the globe, the 21st anniversary edition of this internationally significant exhibition presents over 30 artists working in disciplines including textiles, photography, painting, sculpture, installation and film and video.

Selected artists:
David Birkin, Rudi J.L. Bogaerts, John Bourne, Alexandre Camarao, Javier Chozas, Martyn Cross, Eugenia Cuellar, Jessie Edwards-Thomas, Sarah Entwistle, Expanded Eye, Julia R. Gallego, David Garner, Thomas Goddard, Oona Grimes, Georgia Hayes, Nick Hornby, Sooim Jeong, Nancy Jones, Adam Knight, Piotr Krzymowski, James Lewis, Neil McNally, Irene Montemurro, Anna Perach, Jessica Quinn, Ariel Reichman, William Roberts, Samantha Rosenwald, Klara Sedlo, Corinna Spencer, Chris Thompson, Richard Wathen, Paul Yore, Madalina Zaharia

Since its inception in 1989, the MOSTYN Open has functioned as a call-out to artists of any age and location, celebrating the highest calibre of established and emerging artistic practices from across the world. This year, a team of internationally recognised curators selected 34 artists, offering an expansive view of global visual art themes and trends. Presented in Galleries 3, 4 and 5, MOSTYN Open 21 is a site for artists’ works that respond to key personal, political and societal issues related to the contemporary world we live in.

A prize of GBP 10,000 is awarded to the winner of the main prize, selected by the judging panel, with a further Audience Award of GBP 1,000 granted to the artist who receives the most votes from visitors during the exhibition’s run. New, for MOSTYN Open 21, the Exhibition Award will award an exhibition at MOSTYN to the artist/collective that the selectors feel would most benefit at this point in their career.

Selectors
Jennifer Higgie, Editorial Director, Frieze, London;
Katerina Gregos, Independent Curator, Brussels;
Hannah Conroy, Co-Director and Curator, Kunstraum, London;
Alfredo Cramerotti, Director, MOSTYN.
The visiting public for the Audience Award.

Exhibition opening event and announcement of winner of MOSTYN Open Award and Exhibition Award: July 13, 2019 from 4pm
Voting for the Audience Award closes on Sunday, October 20, 2019 with the winner announced before the exhibition end.

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Elisabetta Benassi: EMPIRE
EMPIRE is a project by Elisabetta Benassi, winner of the third edition of the Italian Council (2018) call set up by the Directorate-General for Contemporary Art and Architecture and Urban Peripheries (DGAAP) of the Ministry for Cultural Heritage and Activities to promote Italian contemporary art worldwide. 

EMPIRE reflects the basic building element of ancient architecture, the Roman brick, transforming it into an element with new aesthetic potential and meaning, constitutive of a site-specific installation made of 6,000 terracotta bricks impressed with the inscription that entitles the work.

The term “empire,” with its varied and contrasting meanings, suggests figures of power and grandeur, and at the same time evokes dark scenes of coercion, domination and submission. By positioning herself at the crossroads between history and memory, between symbolic and political value, verbal language and visual experience, with this project Elisabetta Benassi once again reflects on the dialectic relationship between the past and the present. Like a form of device that produces unexpected configurations, the work aims to challenge the idea of an Ancient period that is considered as accepted fact, instead presenting it as a conflicting plot, a form of resistance to the presumed inevitability of the present.

Following MOSTYN’s presentation, EMPIRE will take on a new form in the courtyard of the Museo Nazionale Romano – Palazzo Altemps, then reach its final and permanent destination at Museo Nazionale Romano – Crypta Balbi in Rome, at the same time as the documentative exhibition at the Pontificia Accademia dei Virtuosi al Pantheon.

The project EMPIRE by Elisabetta Benassi is curated in MOSTYN by Alfredo Cramerotti, Director. It has been made possible with the support of the Italian Council Directorate-General for Contemporary Art and Architecture and Urban Peripheries (DGAAP) of the Ministry for Cultural Heritage and Activities under the direction of Federica Galloni. It is promoted by Museo Nazionale Romano in collaboration with the Pontificia Accademia dei Virtuosi al Pantheon, the Italian Institute of Culture in London, and MOSTYN, Wales UK.

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