As a recent fine art graduate and newly qualified art teacher, this award would help me to continue my art practice alongside teaching, support with material costs and push my work towards larger scale installation. This award would also help make connections within the arts and my local community.
Being from County Durham myself, and having strong ties to Darlington through family and my education, I would use this opportunity to contribute to my local area. Similar to my current practice which combines the duality of portraiture, architexture, and textile. I would be eager to explore the duality of historical and contemporary contexts in Darlington within my art. I would also be keen to make connections with new artistic developments and programmes such as the growing Hopetown, hippodrome, and other local galleries.
My practice is an exploration of the image as a threshold, using blinds and curtains as a medium to disrupt ways of viewing. The portraits become embedded into the surface, resulting in a ghostly image. Shifting between the visible and invisible as the scene blurs, I am concerned with challenging viewers’ perception and mediating memory through the loss of an image. The work bends the boundaries of what acrylic paints can achieve when applied to different media as a tool to interrupt the painting. A negotiation occurs between the audience and the work as they are persuaded to move around the space in order to decipher more. This often results in one deviating from a traditional viewing position due to the trompe l’oeil qualities the art possesses. My work has been most recently been exhibited in the Leicester Society of Arts as a finalist of the student awards.
I have a 1st class BA (hons) in Fine art from Loughborough University and will be graduating this summer from Durham Scitt as a secondary teacher of Art and Photography.
I have been given the One to Watch: Innovation award from Nottingham Contemporary 2024, the overall winner and Fine art winner of the Batsford Prize 2023 and Placefirst’s North East artist of the year 2021.
As part of the Batsford Prize in 2023 my work was featured in their blog updates with an interview of my practice. My work was also published in the Northern Echo newspaper and website for winning the North East artist of the year in 2021.
This summer I will be attending the Art Teachers Connect ‘The Art Teacher Residential’ through Leeds University.
Email: aliviahoy1@gmail.com
Address: 231 Scott Place, Newton Aycliffe, Durham, DL5 7NR, GB
Local Authority: Durham County Council
