30 March 2023

Announcements

Announcing Spring residents.

Congratulations Robertas Narkus, Emii Alrai and Beth Kettel

Announcing Spring residents.

Image credit:

Beth Kettel photography credit: Reece Straw

Launch Pad LaB is pleased to announce Emii Alrai, Beth Kettel and Robertas Narkus as the artists selected for the residency’s ninth edition from May 7 to June 27, 2023. To conclude the residency, Curator Rado Ištok will moderate a day of studio visits and conversations with the artists.

Biographies

Emii Alrai works primarily in sculpture and installation. She conceives large-scale realms relating to archaeological research and the natural environments of excavated objects. Weaving together social memory, oral histories, inherited nostalgia and language, her practice questions the rigidity of Empire, and the power of hierarchy and history. Recent solo exhibitions include Reverse Defence, Workplace Foundation, Newcastle, 2022; A Core of Scar, The Hepworth, Wakefield, as part of the Future Collect Commission, 2022; and Passing of the Lilies, Jerwood Arts, London, 2021. Emii lives and works in Leeds, UK.

Beth Kettel works with a range of media including costume, video, text, sound, sculpture and print. Motivated by an interest in all forms of language and meaning-making, Kettel explores alternative forms of communication. Her investigations address the common ground between psychological and physical experience, and the mental health of humans, plants and animals. Recent solo exhibitions include The Sound of Somebody Changing Their Mind, Phoenix, Leicester, 2021; and A Mutual Influence, Green Man Festival, Wales, 2021. Beth is currently Writer-In-Residence at Nottingham Contemporary, Nottingham, UK. Photography credit: Reece Straw.

Robertas Narkus describes his practice as the “management of circumstance in an economy of coincidence.” Employing various media ranging from photography, video, and performance to lectures and entrepreneurship, he brings together the ordinary and the absurd to explore notions of progress, technology and human desires. Narkus is the founder of the Vilnius Institute for Pataphysics, of “Autarkia,” an artist day care centre, and of The Visionary, a platform for art and business collaborations. His work has been shown internationally. In 2022, Narkus represented Lithuania at the 59th Venice Biennale. Robertas lives and works in Vilnius.

Rado Ištok is Curator of the Collection of Modern and Contemporary Art at the National Gallery in Prague, Czech Republic, and a PhD candidate at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, Austria. In addition to co-curating exhibitions such as the biennale Matter of Art, Prague (2022) and the European Cooperation Project 4Cs: From Conflict to Conviviality through Creativity and Culture, Nida Art Colony, Vilnius, Lithuania (2018–2020), Rado writes and edits widely. He contributes to numerous international art journals as well as academic publications, most recently to Cultures of Silence: The Power of Untold Narratives (Routledge 2023) edited by Luísa Santos.