International art world acclaim beckons for Northumbria graduate

Artist Joanna Hutton has been invited to exhibit at a prestigious European exhibition less than a year after graduating from Northumbria University, Newcastle.

A graduate of the BxNU Master of Fine Art (MFA) course, delivered in partnership with BALTIC Centre of Contemporary Art, Joanna will exhibit at EVA International – Ireland's Biennial of Contemporary Art.

Entitled, Still (the) Barbarians, the exhibition opens on Saturday 16 April 2016 and has been curated by Koyo Kouoh, the founding artistic director of RAW Material Company, Dakar, and the curator of 1:54 Contemporary African Art Fair in London and New York. Artists’ projects were selected through an open and invited call for proposals, and exhibitions will take place at Limerick City Gallery of Art, Cleeve’s Condensed Milk Factory and various locations across Limerick. Since its foundation in 1977, EVA International has worked with some of the world's leading artists and curators, bringing outstanding exhibitions to audiences on the west coast of Ireland.

Joanna said: "I am thrilled to have been invited to participate in the 2016 edition of EVA International - Ireland’s Biennial titled Still (the) Barbarians.  I applied for the opportunity in June straight after completing my MFA at BxNU proposing the work I made for my final show.  It is a great opportunity for me to be involved in such a prestigious event and feel privileged to have been selected."

Developed in partnership with BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Northumbria’s two-year MFA course offers ambitious artists the opportunity to participate in a unique postgraduate degree programme, centred on the vibrant and dynamic studio culture of the BxNU Institute of Contemporary Art at BALTIC 39 in Newcastle’s city centre. The institute, directed by the BALTIC Professor and Turner Prize-nominated artist Christine Borland, houses a network of internationally active artists, academics and curators who provide world-class teaching and mentorship in fine art practice and research.

Professor Christine Borland, Turner Prize-nominated artist and Northumbria’s BALTIC professor, teaches on the BxNU MFA. She said: “We are delighted to see alumni from the our first graduating BxNU MFA cohort,  Joanna Hutton’s name amongst the stellar list of artists participating in this year’s EVA  International –'Still (the) Barbarians’ .

“Joanna will exhibit her piece from the graduating exhibition ‘Milkilling’ held in the project space at BALTIC 39 last summer.  We look forward to following Joanna's career and we’re sure she will be the first of many of our graduates to go on to international art world acclaim.”

Joanna is currently Associate Fellow at Paper Studio Northumbria, (PSN) a unique facility for the research, teaching and scholarship of paper in relation to fine art, conservation and archiving, as well as for the practice of papermaking.

Northumbria offers a range of courses in the Arts and was rated in the UK Top 10 for research power in the Research Excellence Framework 2014. For more information about studying Arts courses at Northumbria go to: www.northumbria.ac.uk/arts