Plymouth Platform 2018 is a mentoring scheme initiated by Visual Arts Plymouth that seeks to support the development of early career artists, creative practitioners and arts professionals (this may include teachers / researchers / curators) whilst simultaneously developing the mentoring skills of more established artists and professionals in the region.
You can read more about the scheme here…
Elena Brake
Elena Brake is a Plymouth-based artist working with performance and audience participation to reimagine and enchant everyday experiences. She plays on the edge of boredom and anticipation by focusing obsessively on mundane details until they become magical. Her pieces direct the attention of the audience onto unexpected moments, stirring complicated emotional responses.
Her practice captivates through its blunt simplicity and accessibility. The playful moments of pause offered by her work allow the viewer a chance to savour small moments of enlightenment in the ordinary, revealing the magic of domestic and public experience.
For Plymouth Art Weekender Elena presented Cleaning in Progress, an interactive performance event that which took place in Plymouth City Centre on the Saturday and Sunday of the weekender. Cleaning in Progress invites members of the public to join in with the absurd activity of 'cleaning' Plymouth using domestic/household equipment. In addition to creating a spectacle in a fun and playful way, I am very curious about what happens when the public are given cleaning equipment... what conversations and issues might this raise for people.
more info: www.elenabrake.co.uk
social: instagram.com/elenabrake || twitter.com/elenabrake || facebook.com/elenabrakeart
Rhys Morgan
Rhys Morgan is a multi disciplinary artist based in Plymouth. Interlacing several processes, Rhys creates a dialogue between sound, video, collage and text which explores our relationship with the idea of information and modes of learning. The work questions the notion of knowing through its permeating sense of lexis, building an impression of the surrounding environment but also of widespread anxiety and fear.
His assemblages explore the unsettling, overwhelming banality of daily ritual, counterposing pop cultural references with fragments of mundanity and candid description of internalised dispossession, creating a kind of ‘queer despair’.
more info: https://daddygogue.tumblr.com || vimeo.com/rhysjsmorgan
social: instagram.com/rhys__m
Flo Brooks
Flo Brooks is an artist living and working between Brighton and the South-West of England. His practice encompasses painting, collage, print and social practice to investigate ideas surrounding identity, liminality and physicality.
Recent exhibitions include Is now a good time?, Cubitt Gallery, London, 2017; Outskirts – Astigmatism – Acutance, Exeter Phoenix Café Gallery, Exeter, 2017; Plymouth Art Weekender, Plymouth, 2017; Inland Art Festival, Cornwall, 2016 and Open Source, Gillett Square, London, 2016. He recently launched Outskirts, a social portrait project exploring liminality in relation to trans and gender non-conforming identity anblished by Makina Books, 2016.
more info: flobrooks.co.uk
social: twitter.com/florian_brooks || instagram.com/flobrooks
Plymouth Platform is designed & coordinated by Visual Arts Plymouth, informed by previous mentoring schemes run by VASW, a-n (review bursaries) and Hand in Glove (Bristol) and is supported financially through Horizon – a collaborative two year programme of visual contemporary arts, funded through Arts Council England’s Ambition for Excellence fund and supported by Plymouth Culture.