ArtSway Open 08

6 December 2008 - 8 February 2009

Open 08 Winner Announced

Many congratulations to Benjamin Beker who is the winner of this year's Open and awarded the prize of a solo exhibition at ArtSway. Benjamin's exhibition will take place at the gallery later in the year, providing an invaluable oportunity for him to show his work in a professional environment, along with full curatorial and marketing support for the duration of the exhibition. Past winners have included the landscape painter and sculptor Laura Green, and painter Laura Mousavi Zadeh.

Beker entered the work, War and Liberation Monument Installation. He comments:

"Since moving to London, my work is mostly related to my home country. The 'Serbian War and Liberation Monument Installation' is a recent work in which I chose to isolate war memorials from their surrounding and de-historicise them by placing them on to a neutral background. By taking the Monuments out of their context and scaling them all down to the same size I have taken their significance away and made them almost toy-like. My inspirations are work that deals with ideology, architecture and memory."

Biography

Benjamin Beker was born in 1976 in Bonn, Germany and grew up in Belgrade, Yugoslavia and in Hong Kong, China. On returning to Belgrade he studied Photography at the BK Art Academy and graduated in 2001. Beker moved to London in 2005 and a year later undertook an MA in Photography at the Royal College of Art. He received the National Magazine Award in 2007, and for his final exhibition piece War and Liberation Monument Installation, received the Painters and Stainers Prize, RCA Society and Thames & Hudson Art Book Prize, whilst being short-listed for the Conran Award. Beker’s work has been published in the last edition of the Specialten Magazine and in the Magenta Foundation Flash Forward '08 Catalogue. He now lives and works in London and has been exhibiting in various group shows such as the Hoopers Gallery Summer Show and most recently Farmers Market at Handel Street Project Gallery in London, curated by Fedja Klikovac.

Benjamin Beker with his winning work, War and Liberation Monument

Installation I, 2008

The ArtSway Open 08 and subsequent winner's solo exhibition is sponsored by Lashmars Accountants of Lymington (www.lashmars.co.uk) with additional support from Arts and Business.