Castlefield Gallery Awards Announcements for AIR Open 2018

Castlefield Gallery was proud to recently support Air Studios & Gallery with Curator Matthew Pendergast selecting two awards for the second annual AIR Open 2018.

Rufus Biddle was awarded honorary Castlefield Gallery Associate Membership and Lucy Ridges was awarded a highly commended award.

Biddle’s work draws from his everyday experiences, often mixing text with objects and carefully selected plant life. Castlefield Gallery’s Curator, Matthew Pendergast said Biddle’s sculptural assemblages are bizarre but beautiful encounters, stage sets for something nostalgic but also uncanny. There is a sense of finding oneself at home but also out of place – a feeling perhaps suggestive of our troubled national spirit. We hope Castlefield Gallery Associate Membership will support Biddle’s continued development as an artist, making increasingly ambitious work.

Also highly commended was Lucy Ridges, for her technically and visually stunning series of double exposure cyanotypes, Shallows. In this series Ridges’ thoughtful use of the female nude is combined with oceanic and celestial imagery suggesting a spiritual connection between humankind and the natural world.

Image: Rufus Biddle, The Vic, 2018