John Costi is the 12th South London Gallery Postgraduate Artist in Residence.
Costi’s work is rooted in healing and transformation. Using play and conversation to create artworks that bring people together and form social connections, he often takes found objects to create sculptures and installations, a practice he refers to as ‘Culture-Mating’.
Costi seeks to make sense of the world through existing materials as a visual-slang, suggesting that through conversation and assemblage, collective and individual histories are shared. He uses spoken word in his practice, and also creates characters and environments that draw on his personal heritage and experiences growing up to celebrate London’s traditions and histories.
BIOGRAPHY
John Costi (b.1987) is an artist whose work draws on his Cypriot and Irish heritage, and experience of growing up in London. He creates sculptures, installations, paintings and performance. Often improvised and informed by chance, the work lives in the social sphere. He is interested in dismantling hierarchies of art experience, turning passive audiences into active participants. Costi graduate from Central St Martins MA Fine Art in 2022.
Recent exhibitions include; Tiger Milk, Krabbesholm Højskole, Denmark; Trash Money, Light Eye Mind, London; and performances at V22, London and Tate Modern, London.
Two Temple Place residency: Forthcoming exhibition Inside at Two Temple Place, 28th January 2023 – 26th February 2023.
ABOUT THE RESIDENCY
The South London Gallery Postgraduate Residency is an open submission six-month live-in residency that provides an early-career artist with a rare opportunity to produce a new body of work, which is then exhibited at the SLG. The residency is open to artists who have completed a BA, and have undertaken a period of self-directed, peer-led or postgraduate study in the year prior to the residency. This can include alternative, peer organised and non-accredited programmes from an institution, collective or art school in the UK as well as an MA, MFA, PGDip, MRes.
The residency includes rent-free accommodation, a studio space, a £4,000 artists fee and £3,500 bursary to produce new work, mentoring, a commissioned essay and a solo exhibition in one of the SLG Fire Station galleries.
The Postgraduate Residency is supported by the Paul and Louise Cooke Endowment.
John Costi, South London Gallery, 2023. Photo by Brynley Odu Davies.
John Costi, South London Gallery, 2023. Photo by Brynley Odu Davies.
