Brazão’s winning work is a large colourful and striking tapestry titled HIATO, inspired by the relationship between two unconnected spaces on his home island of Madeira.
“There are two spaces on the island (of Madeira) that I wanted to make a work about, and when I saw the [competition] theme of ‘Dialogues’ it was very relevant because I was already looking into these two spaces. They are similar even though they are physically separated… and so I found that the idea of connecting them and creating a fictional tunnel between them was interesting. They are two traditional houses with a wood bread oven. They are very different in that one is a big space where the oven is actually visible, so that everyone can see it … while the other one is hidden away in a kind of storage room. I found how they related to each other very interesting… I am interested in how in contemporary art, it appears people are scared of colour, I think that they feel that there should have a reason for choosing one colour [over another] … in my work I try to play with that and make it playful and engaging.”
Hugo Brazão
Brazão initially studied painting, but since he completed his MA at Central St Martin’, he has been experimenting with many mediums as well as combining and mixing them. Nevertheless, the creation of this huge tapestry HIATO has been a revealing experience for him: -
“As it is a new medium for me, I had to have a bit of help just to get started with the [use of the] machine. There is also a lot of hand sewing which I did myself, it was more with the planning and getting started that I had friends helping me out. It’s very different from what I have usually done and it requires a lot more planning. You need to make sure everything will fit together and you don’t end up with the wrong shape! It was interesting to think in a different way. Usually when I work, I go bit-by- bit, so this was more experimental and I had to follow some rules. Tapestry gives you a chance to work on a large scale. I liked how you can work with space with it as well… creating walls… and it’s something! … There is a lot that I can do with it and I would like to do more.”
Brazão was initially trained at art school in Lisbon from where he progressed to an MA at Central St Martin’s. He found the teaching techniques very different: -
“The MA had a very different approach on the part of the teaching [methods] to what I was used to in Lisbon. I studied painting in Lisbon and … although some teachers tried to motivate us to experiment a bit more, it was still structured. We had to do the traditional things as well … when I came to the UK, it was the opposite! I enjoyed it a lot more as we were encouraged to get out of our comfort zones and that was very good for me, because that was when I started experimenting with other mediums which I had never worked with before and that pushed me forwards”.
The sumptuous SALA BRASIL gallery at the Brazilian Embassy was once the main ticket hall for the White Star Line also known as the Oceanic Steam Navigation Company. In the late 1800s, the company rose to dominate the most important shipping lines of the world. It would have been in that very hall that passengers bought their tickets to sail on the infamous RMS Titanic. Now used largely as an effective and centrally placed art gallery, it has created an imposing setting for the excellent works of the 30 finalists that were selected for the VIA Arts Prize.
The VIA Arts prize, sponsored by Itaú, is the result of a partnership between the Embassy of Brazil and the cultural association ACALASP (the Association of Cultural Attachés of Latin America, Spain and Portugal), and the arts charity People’s Palace Projects from Queen Mary University of London. It is exceptionally generous in that the winner is awarded £5000 and the runner up £2000. The prize aims to celebrate the richness of the Ibero-American arts scene in the UK and globally, to ‘… create a more profound cultural awareness by engaging artists with our regional artistic legacies’.
Hugo Brazão: -
“The money is very important but it is more important for me at this stage of my career to have this type of recognition, it inspires you to do more work and gives you the confidence as well. It’s a way of telling you that you are doing the right thing… there is also the opportunity to have a solo show next year”.
'Social Structure' by Graham Guy-Robinson
Graham Guy -Robinson’s piece titled ‘Social Structure’, inspired by Hélio Oiticica was runner-up. Guy-Robinson earlier work was also inspired by the Hélio Oiticica samba group from the favelas in Rio de Janiero with his iconic Parangolé (1965), which combined material objects with the moving body to challenge boundaries and thus making the marginalized visible. Oiticica was one of the main players in the Neo-Concrete movement and died in 1980. For this current work, Guy-Robinson chose to create a barrier based on the orange perforated fabric barriers so often used on construction sites, to analyse the difference between public and private spaces. It is made from polished steel and hazard paints, and the surfaces as so reflective that they interact with the surrounding viewer’s bodies to explore how we perceive the spaces and materials of urban living.
The unusual and meticulously constructed sculpture “Raízes do Brasil” (Roots of Brazil) by Brazilian artist Sabrina Collares was selected for the Jury’s ‘Special Commendation’’. Inspired by Mariano Salvador Maella’s painting of Carlota Joaquina (The Princess of Spain & Queen of Portugal in 1785) Collares has built up a child-size opulent 18th century court dress known as a Mantua, (think ‘Las Meninas’ in the Prado) with carefully crafted tiny pieces of MDF. Carlota Joaquina was 10 when she married Dom João VI, so this would have been her size! The dress is attached to its plinth by roots representing the rigidity of the conservative and reactionary ideas that dominated the time, ruling out new horizons.
'Raizes do Brasil' by Sabrina Collares
The standard of the finalists this year, the fourth in the history of this prize, has been extremely high, so it feels unfair not to mention some of the others artists that are splendidly exhibited in the ‘Sala Brasil’. Some works stand out for their originality, others for their social comment and some for their plasticity and textures.
Victoria Ahrens “El Lugar Perfecto“ 2018 in Mixed Media Assemblage, is made up of triangular structures with photographic fragments that can be combined in a number of ways to illustrate and question how we perceive reality and “sublime landscapes”. Ahrens chose to set the project in the Andes, a place “where myth, history, and memory collide”.
El Lugar Perfecto by Victoria Ahrens
In a very different way, using more traditional methods, Mohammad Barrangi Fashtami from Rasht in Northern Iran, with his beautiful painting “Dream” re-thinks the paradigm of the typical miniature painting. Sensitively using symbols and signs that come from the ancient cultures of calligraphy that combine religion and art, it comes across as a small mural or even tribal markings.
Even more symbolic is ‘The Weight of the Name’ (2018) Mixed Media Assemblage by Daniela Galán. It explores the repercussions on the country and her very own family when her uncle Luis Carlos Galán was assassinated at the height of his presidential campaign in Colombia in 1989. He had threatened to wage war on the Medellin Cartel led by Pablo Escobar by supporting the extradition treaty with the US, so hit-men were contracted to stop him in his tracks. The weight and pain of her “personal and national history” is represented by a silver-gelatine image of his campaign image printed onto an 80kg metal panel that cannot be ignored or forgotten remaining an ever-present reminder.
All the 30 works are interesting in their own right and the Jury Panel of seven had a hard time to decide who should merit the top prize. The Jury in 2018 included a previous winner of the prize, Ting-Tong Chang, as well as James Nicholls from the Maddox Gallery, Paulina Korobkiewicz of the Bermondsey Project Space, Kik Mazzucchelli, the writer, Irene Due from Acute Art, Sumantro Ghose, a cultural advisor and Will Sorrell, managing director of the London Design Biennale. A discerning group that adds value to the importance of this award.
Although Hugo Brazão’s themes and ideas have moved more globally, the textures playfulness and colours that appear in his work seem to reflect influences from his native Madeira. A stunning archipelago with just over a quarter of a million inhabitants, these islands have produced exquisite crafts and embroideries that have been popular with all the royal houses of Europe. In particular however, Madeira is famous for having invented the ‘ukulele’. Called a ‘Braguinha’ in Madeira, this small four-string guitar travelled as far as Hawaii with the musical seafaring mariners.
Hugo Brazão: -
“The islands in themselves are very sculptural, there are beautiful mountains with very dramatic cliffs… and there is a lot of colour., The rocks around the beach are a really nice grey and then on the mountains they are almost red. You also have a tropical feeling with tropical fruits and banana trees”.
There is a notable freshness and spontaneity to his work which is truly delightful, adding to the sheer plasticity of the textures and hues. This is in evidence in his colourful tapestry HIATO. Brazão’s work seeks to explores different mediums and colour and often, with a great deal of humour as well: -
“My general recurring theme is the border between what is real or what is fictional. That recurs in different ways. Both in the sense of dream or fake news … to see which is which. Today on the internet there are lots of images that you see and you don’t know if they’re real or not. For example, I did a project [when] NASA, the space exploring company shared a picture of Mars. There was a rock in the background and it went viral on the internet and people cropped it and it started to look like a gorilla … it actually looks like a gorilla … if you look at the whole picture to see how big the rock actually is, it’s [quite small] … so I did that work about a miniature gorilla living on Mars (There is a Gorilla on Mars). The idea of reality versus illusion”.
'There is a gorilla on Mars' by Hugo Brazão
The work of the 30 VIA Arts Prize winners and finalists can be viewed till Jan 31st 2019 at the SALA BRASIL on the ground floor of the Brazilian Embassy 14-16 Cockspur St. SW1Y 5BL by Trafalgar Square. Free entry.
Opening hours 10am-6pm
