The European Investment Bank Institute is pleased to announce the two beneficiaries of the second edition of the Artists’ Development Programme:
The first call for applications (geographical focus) attracted a lot of interest, with 50 applications from the eight eligible countries (Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia).
Dominik Gajarsky, from the Czech Republic, is the winner.
The second call for applications (thematic focus) gained a lot of traction as well, with 65 artists from all over Europe responding to the creative brief “The Imprint of Man – Representing the Anthropocene”.
Dutch artist, Sjoerd van Leeuwen, is the winner.
The applicants were practitioners in a wide range of artistic media in the visual arts field and presented inspiring and original projects for the residencies.
Dominik Gajarsky and Sjoerd van Leeuwen will be mentored by internationally acclaimed Polish artist Mirosław Bałka.
The two residencies will provide the artists with a unique opportunity to develop their practice at the highest level, through mentoring by a leading peer. They will spend a few days in Warsaw in September to visit Mirosław Bałka and experience his two creative studios. They will then come to Luxembourg for four weeks, taking up residency at the Abbaye de Neumünster, where Mirosław Bałka will join them in mid-October.
The artworks produced during the residencies will be showcased at the European Investment Bank thereafter.
ARTISTS’ DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMME (ADP)
The concept behind the ADP, a flagship initiative of the EIB Institute’s Arts programme, is to generate an innovative creative platform by introducing emerging artists to both an established mentor in their discipline (visual arts) and to appropriate public art fora.
The ADP aims to foster emerging talent, in a highly challenging economic environment characterised by reduced funding for Europe’s cultural sector: budding young artists are very much left to their own devices once they have graduated from art school. This is where the Institute steps in, by offering them the opportunity to develop their artistic practice whilst being free of any material contingency during the period of the project.
