Performance by dancer Mina Aidoo. Photo: Michele Panzeri
|
Deutsche Bank Awards, London, 2011: Christofer Habig, Global Head of Brand Communications & Corporate Citizenship, Deutsche Bank. Photo: Michele Panzeri
|
Tom Pope, ‘Untitled’ from the series ‚Curious Search for Nothing’, © Tom Pope
|
Renhui Zhao for The Institute of Critical Zoologists. © Renhui Zhao
|
Amy McDonough, Video still from ‘Anthrax Drum’, 2011. © Amy McDonough
|
|
|
Fostering new talent: back in 1993, Deutsche Bank initiated a program in London that supports creative newcomers each year. Since that time, more than 120 graduates of British academies for art, music, dance, and design have profited from the Deutsche Bank Awards. This year, the awards ceremony took place at the London Contemporary Dance School, where prizes were awarded in thirteen categories. One of the winners is Tom Pope of the Royal College of Art, who plans a 40-day pilgrimage to transport an old grandfather clock from London to Geneva with the aim of burying it there on the grounds of the European Organization for Nuclear Research. Along the way, Pope is planning 40 performances as well as photographs and films that address the possibilities of a timeless life. Amy McDonough received the Deutsche Bank Award in Fine Arts for her Collective Memories. The graduate of the Royal Academy of Arts organized encounters between city-dwelling artists and inhabitants of Alnmouth, a village on the coast of Northumberland. Together, the artists and locals will create works of art. Cor Habeo, a company formed by two fashion students at the University of the Arts in London, have produced handmade, foot-friendly high heels, while two designers at the Royal College of Art plan to revolutionize the way knowledge is conveyed on the Internet with their website Yossarian Lives!. The winning projects stand out by virtue of their power of artistic innovation and creativity, but also through their entrepreneurial spirit.
Not only do the winners receive the financial boost of 10,000 pounds; they are also invited to take part in a business training program, while a personal mentor from Deutsche Bank is always at hand to help advise them in the completion of their project. And of course they profit from the great connections Deutsche Bank has to the local scenes. Among the best-known winners of the Deutsche Bank Award is Christopher Kane. Since receiving the prize in 2006, he has gone on to become one of the best-known British fashion designers. Many of the fine artists have also been able to establish themselves internationally, for instance the art photographer Clare Strand and the sculptor Gereon Krebber. Graham Hudson, awarded in 2002, was discovered at the Zoo Art Fair in 2007 by Charles Saatchi, who purchased one of his large garbage assemblages. Peles Empire, a project by the two artists Katharina Stöver and Barbara Wolff, is also much in demand. The winners from 2009 have put up exhibitions at the Maes & Matthys Gallery, Antwerp and the MAK Center for Art & Architecture / Schindler House in Los Angeles, among others. This year, Peles Empire was invited by the Frieze Art Fair to take part in their project series. The duo will install a bar conceived as a gesamtkunstwerk at the London fair, of which Deutsche Bank is the main sponsor.
|
