Receiving The Dover Prize bursary would allow me to explore my ongoing project initiated this year, No One is an Island: Letter to Strangers, explores the concept of fragmentation in relation to the foreign, the strange, and the landscapes we inhabit. My experience as an immigrant living in the UK for the past ten years has placed me in a continuous negotiation between belonging and estrangement. Recently, after waiting for over half a year, I was granted settlement, a moment that marked not only legal recognition, but also a deeper emotional and psychological commitment to the place I now call home. That extended period of uncertainty sharpened my awareness of what it means to reside somewhere. This project was born from that reflection. It has shaped both how I experience my environment and how I express it visually. Through painting and drawing, I seek to translate this layered condition into a visual language that reflects the tension between representation and abstraction, informed by internal states and the landscapes surrounding me.
The £10,000 bursary would support the development of a new body of large-scale paintings works created in response to Darlington and its surrounding landscapes. I would allocate the funding to cover studio rental, materials, travel, accomodation and research costs, and fees for documentation.
This award would give me the freedom to take time to reflect, research, and expand my visual language beyond its current scope. In addition to producing a new series, I would use part of the bursary to facilitate public engagement, through open studio events, a talk, and informal workshops, creating space for dialogue around themes of identity, place, and dislocation.
The Dover Prize would mark a pivotal point in my career, enabling me to bridge studio practice with site-specific thinking and community engagement. It would support the creation of new work that synthesises my research into migration and memory with local histories of movement and settlement, ultimately contributing to a richer, more layered painting practice.
My practice engages with ideas of place, migration, and memory, themes that resonate strongly with Darlington’s layered history as a centre of industrial innovation, movement, and change. Once the birthplace of the world’s first passenger railway, Darlington has long been a site of transit and transformation, shaped by both the physical movement of people and the emotional geographies of work, loss, and adaptation.
Through this project, I hope to open a space for reflection on the experience of ‘being a stranger’ , a concept that crosses cultures and histories, and one that continues to echo in Darlington’s evolving identity. By developing new paintings that respond to the local terrain and by engaging with communities through open studios and informal events, I aim to generate meaningful connections between contemporary art and lived experience.
My work seeks to contribute to Darlington’s cultural profile by presenting a painting practice rooted in research, reflection, and dialogue. By grounding this work in the specific context of Darlington, its past, its present, and its people. I hope to foster curiosity, emotional insight, and cultural exchange.
I am a painter whose practice explores themes of fragmentation, displacement, and the shifting nature of belonging. Rooted in personal experience as an immigrant living in the UK, my work draws from emotional memory, language, and landscape. I translate these layered experiences into a visual language that merges abstraction with figuration, using gestures, textures, erasures, and interrupted forms. Recent solo exhibitions include There Is a Wild Tree Standing and We Sing Again at The Briggait Gallery, Glasgow (2024), Necessary Sequels at HSBC Space, London (2022–23), and Dance with the One Who Brought You at Patricia Fleming Gallery, Glasgow (2021–22). I was also selected for Frontiers: Painting in Scotland Now at the Royal Scottish Academy (2024), and Seen and Unseen at Reid Gallery, Glasgow (2024). My work has been reviewed in publications such as FOA Magazine, ArtMaze Mag, and Fleming Collection, and I have delivered artist talks at institutions including Sotheby’s Institute of Art and Glasgow School of Art. I aim to continue developing a reflective and materially rich painting practice that engages both personally and socially relevant themes.
Yes. I hold a PhD in Fine Art from Glasgow School of Art, which I completed in 2023.
Prior to that, I completed an MA in Painting at the Royal College of Art in 2017. My undergraduate studies were at Ewha Womans University in Seoul, where I earned a BFA in Painting alongside a BA in History of Art in 2012.
Yes, I have received a number of professional grants and awards, all supporting self-initiated projects and independent research. In 2024, I was awarded grants from the Hope Scott Trust, the Visual Artist and Craft Maker Awards (VACMA), The Eaton Fund, Hahnemühle Fund, and Wasps Arts. These supported material costs, studio development, and public engagement activities.
In 2023, I received the Carol Rhodes Bursary from Carol Rhodes Archive & Glasgow School of Art. Earlier awards include the RK Burt & Co. Prize through the Flourish Award in 2018, and finalist positions in the Hopper Prize (2019), Bath Open Art Prize (2019), and Winsor & Newton Young Artist Award (2016).
Since last year, I have organised open studio events and project-based gatherings that bring together artists and audiences.
Yes. I was commissioned to develop new work for Seen and Unseen, an exhibition reflecting on the work and legacy of Carol Rhodes. The project was initiated by the Carol Rhodes Archive and Glasgow School of Art and brought together a writer, a curator, and myself as the invited artist. My commission involved responding directly to Rhodes’ archive, exploring shared concerns around constructed landscapes, spatial tension, and modes of observation.
While my work has not yet been acquired by a public collection, it has been collected by a recognised private collection. The HSBC Art Collection acquired two of my paintings, one in 2016 and another in 2022.
Yes. My work has been reviewed and featured in a number of respected platforms. In 2022, The Fleming Collection published an article titled Drawn from Memory by Greg Thomas, which offered an in-depth reflection on my painting practice in relation to themes of memory, identity, and dislocation.
Other notable features include Memory and Detour by Jonathan Miles (2022), as well as coverage in FOA Magazine (USA), ArtMaze Mag and FAR TSUSHIN (Japan). I was also included in a special issue of ArticulAction in 2017.
Yes. I have participated in several recognised artist residencies. These include:
Elephant Lab, Colart & Winsor and Newton & Elephant Magazine (London, 2020)
Aucart Residency Lab (London, 2019)
Summer House (Düsseldorf, Germany, 2018)
ARNA Residency House (Harlösa, Sweden, 2018)
Email: studiosinpark@gmail.com
Address: F202, 77 Hanson Street, Glasgow, G31 2HF, GB
Local Authority: Glasgow City Council
