The Arts Council, Ireland, offers an annual fellowship to one artist to facilitate his/her participation in the international residency programme at Location One in New York. Based in the Soho district of New York, Location One is an independent not-for-profit organisation dedicated to fostering new forms of creative expression and cultural exchange through exhibitions, residencies, performances, public lectures and workshops. It supports experimentation and is focused on the convergence between visual, performing and digital arts.
The purpose of the Arts Council’s Location One Fellowship is to enable an artist to develop his/her practice and create new work over a 10 month period in New York. In addition to the support and resources provided by Location One, the fellowship also includes flights to and from New York, accommodation and a stipend. The overall value of the award is in the region of €40,000.
The recipient of this year’s award is the artist Atsushi Kaga who lives and works in Dublin. Atsushi Kaga’s work depicts a fictionalized world inhabited by a cast of invented characters. Through his alternative reality, Kaga explores personal and cultural identity, as well as complex social issues. He plays with the tension between integrity and corruptibility, nature and nurture, innocence and experience, and freedom and constriction.
Atsushi Kaga, born in 1978, graduated from the National College of Art and Design in 2005. He participated in artist’s residencies at ISCP, New York (2011); IMMA, Dublin (2010); Fountainhead, Miami, and Galeria Leme, Sao Paulo (2009). Recent solo shows include Art Future at Art HK 11, Kantor Art, Los Angeles; FIAC, Paris; Mother’s Tankstation, Dublin; Galeria Leme, Sao Paulo; Butler Gallery, Kilkenny; and Nicholas Krupp in Basel. Group shows include Sandra and David Bakalar Gallery, MassArt, Boston; Pallas Contemporary Project, Dublin; NADA, Miami with Mother’s Tankstation; and Temple Bar Gallery, Dublin. He is a recipient of Mont Blanc Young Artist World Patronage in 2011. Kaga is represented by Mother’s Tankstation.
