The School of Music and Fine Art is delighted to announce that Fine Art graduate Sophie Dixon has been awarded the 2014 Platform Award.
Platform Graduate Award winner Sophie Dixon, pictured with Peter Heslip, Director of Visual Art, Arts Council England, and the Lord Mayor of Portsmouth.
The Platform award is the most prestigious available to a graduating student across the entire south east stretching from Portsmouth to Milton Keynes to Margate.
Five galleries – Aspex, Portsmouth; De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill; Modern Art Oxford; MK Gallery, Milton Keynes and Turner Contemporary, Margate – each showcased selected work of recent graduates. Through a rigorous process of presentation and interview, Sophie was chosen from a final shortlist of 5 graduates and was presented with the Platform award on Saturday at Aspex Gallery by Peter Heslip, director of Visual Art, Arts Council England, and the Lord Mayor of Portsmouth. Sophie will receive a bursary of £2500 as part of the award together with 12 months of support and mentoring from an experienced art professional.
Sophie’s work was selected by the Turner Contemporary Gallery. And Only Fine Threads Hold Us To Each Moment, consists of a 50 page book, prints and written text about Srbská, formerly Wünschendorf, a small village on the Czech Republic’s modern-day border with Poland. The artist’s video installation Wünschendorf, explores the irreversible changes that the Second World War wrought on the lives of millions, a period of loss and displacement which continues to influence the world in which we live today.
The Platform project is part of School of Music and Fine Art’s ongoing working partnership with the Turner Contemporary. The award supports graduate professional development and nurtures emerging artists from universities from across the South East region.
School of Music and Fine Art would like to congratulate Sophie on her achievement and thank staff at the Turner Contemporary for their continuing support for our students through Platform and other activities. Our relationship with the Turner has grown in strength over the last few years and the Platform project forms a key component of the fine art 3rd year.
“Congratulations to Sophie Dixon on this fantastic achievement. Supporting artistic ambition and talent is an important aspect of the work we do at Turner Contemporary. We are delighted that a Kent graduate has been selected as the winner of this year’s Platform Award.” – Victoria Pomery, Director of Turner Contemporary
“Sophie is a deserved winner of this award, Scholtz’s House is a poetic and poignant study of a historical trauma from the Second World War that remains unconcealed and unresolved even to this day and told with remarkable insight and maturity. The whole School is very proud of this outstanding achievement.he refugee, the displaced person, the migrant is the emblematic figure representing ‘the quintessential experience of our time.” – Andy Conio, Director of Fine Art, University of Kent