Silverlens foundation announces grantees for 2008

Silverlens Foundation (SLF) proudly announces the winners of their 2008 Grant Program. This year, SLF received over 30 applications for the four grant categories. Similar to last year’s Grant Program which had numerous international applicants, applications came from as far as Israel, United States and Australia. Out of these, only 3 were selected.

SLF Acquisition Grant. The Board of the Silverlens Foundation selects completed bodies of work to be acquired for the SLF Collection. The 2008 SLF Acquisition Grant is awarded to second time winner Conrado Velasco for PIXEL TOWERS 1-6: Deadpan Aesthetics, Lossy Compression & Post-It Notes, and to Lena Cobangbang for Overland. In Pixel Towers, Conrado Velasco transforms pixilated images of the Bechers’ water towers into photographic installations of pink Post-Its, exploring pictorial issues brought about by technology. Lena Cobangbang’s Overland series, on the other hand is a group of photographs using food as material for recreating miniature landscapes. In these fantasy topographies, Cobangbang tries to create what is truly utopian.

SLF Completion Grant. Completion Grants are awarded to photographers and visual artists working with photography to finish an ongoing project or body of work. The 2008 SLF Completion Grant goes to Filipina-American artist Gina Osterloh for her Shooting Blanks series, currently being exhibited at Green Papaya Art Projects. Shooting Blanks is composed of 14 photographs of room-size paper environments created by Osterloh, which focus on sensations of muteness, the desire to connect, and rashes - all non-verbal sensations of the body upon her moving to Manila.

There is no winner of the SLF Curatorial Exhibition Grant for 2008. The Asian Cultural Council (ACC)-SLF Fellowship Grantee will be announced in June. The works of this year’s SLF Grantees will be exhibited at Silverlens Gallery in December 2008 and will automatically become a part of the Silverlens Foundation Collection. The SLF Collection is the first permanent collection of photography in the Philippines. Since 2006, SLF has been accepting applications from photographers and artists working with photography for acquisition, completion, curatorial and fellowship grants.

The call for entries for the SLF Grant Program 2009 will be announced in October 2008.

For more information, visit Silverlens Foundation 2/F YMC Building 2, 2320 Pasong Tamo Extension, Makati. Hours are from 10am to 7pm Mondays to Fridays and 1pm to 6pm on Saturdays. For more information, call 8160044, email manage@silverlensphoto.com or go to www.silverlensphoto.com.