Deme Georghiou, Bursary Award 2019

We are pleased to announce that Deme Georghiou has been selected as the recipient of the Drawing Room Bursary Award 2019.

Georghiou, who graduated from the Royal College of Art, London in 2017 and was selected as a Bloomberg New Contemporary in 2018, will take up residence at Drawing Room for the month of August. The London-based artist’s practice includes painting, acrylic and plaster reliefs and metalwork, with drawing acting as the foundation to these processes. Georghiou’s nomination was made by Ryan Mosley (b. 1980, Chesterfield), a Sheffield-based artist known for his gestural and imaginative character-based works on canvas. Mosley nominated Georghiou based on his ‘inventive and thoughtful practice which is rooted in drawing, a fundamental catalyst in his practice.’

Although Georghiou uses a huge range of processes as modes of image-making, he says: ‘My working practice always begins with a biro drawing on a small paper notepad. The drawings I produce tell short stories, make glancing observations or document whimsical thoughts. The settings within the drawings are often autobiographical.’

The artist, whose heritage is Greek Cypriot, finds himself drawn to The Parthenon Sculptures and Assyrian Bas-Reliefs that can be found in the British Museum. This fascination with archaeological artefacts is filtered through his research into British Modernists such as Eduardo Paolozzi, William Mitchell and Hubert Dalwood, whose public sculptural and mural works often intervene with twentieth century architecture. Georghiou intends to use the unique architecture of Drawing Room’s gallery space to create site-specific works that are ambitious both materially and in terms of their scale.

Every two years, the Bursary Award offers an artist the opportunity to develop a body of work using the gallery as a studio or space for dialogue with the public. Previous recipients include Hardeep Pandhal, Ciara Phillips and Barbara Walker. The Bursary Award 2019 selection panel included Drawing Room Co-Directors Kate Macfarlane and Mary Doyle, Barbara Walker (artist and 2017 Bursary Award recipient) and Grant Watson (curator and Artistic Director for Migrant Bauhaus).