Kingsgate Desktop Backdrops
We are thrilled to announce we have received generous funding from the Arts Council Emergency Response Fund to run a socially distant programme.
As more and more people are working from home; an increasing amount of time is being spent working on a laptop. To claim this space’s potential for viewing contemporary art, each month over a six month period, Kingsgate invited one artist to make a new digital work for our audience to upload to their desktop background.
July 2020 Desktop | Beyond Tempestuous Skies by Ella Belenky
Ella Belenky (b. 1991, USA) is a visual artist currently based in London, UK. Ella completed her undergraduate BA in studio arts at Bard College in Annandale, New York (2013) and her MA in print at The Royal College of Art in London, UK (2019).
Ella is interested in an expanded notion of print – the painterly gesture in conversation with a regurgitated image — re-formed, printed and displaced. By combining and juxtaposing mark making processes that sometimes seamlessly speak and sometimes clash — Ella references notions of the individual and the collective in a world where communication and relationships must also slide between different and sometimes conflicting modes of being.
How to download a desktop work
Firstly, find out what your laptop or computer's resolution size is. If you have a Mac, click on the apple in the top left corner of your screen then select 'About this Mac'. Then choose the 'Display' tab to see what resolution your screen has. For other devices it might be easiest to google your model online to find out it's resolution. Then see which resolution size is best for you from the list below and download the relevant folder:
16:9 formats for Ella Belenky's Desktop Backdrop - download folder
1920 x 1080 pixels (Full HD)
1366 x 768 pixels (Standard resolution on most non-HD laptops)
4612 x 2594 pixels (Highest resolution available suitable for iMac 5K)
3840 x 2160 pixels (4K resolution)
16:10 formats for Ella Belenky's Desktop Backdrop - download folder
1440 x 900 pixels (Older MacBook Air models)
2560 x 1600 pixels (MacBook 13inch and new MacBook Air models)
3072 x 1920 pixels (MacBook Pro 16inch)
2880 x 1800 pixels (MacBook Pro 15 inch)
August 2020 Desktop | Untitled Desktop by Richard Healy
Richard Healy has exhibited at Tenderpixel in London and Marian Cramer Projects in Amsterdam. Most recent exhibitions include Whitechapel Gallery, London; LRRH, Berlin; Hunt Kastner, Prague; Koppe Astner, Glasgow; Project Native Informant, London; Harris Lieberman, New York; and South London Gallery, London. Works have also been selected and exhibited as part of Bloomberg New Contemporaries, Young British Art I & II and The London Open at the Whitechapel Gallery.
16:9 formats for Richard Healy's Desktop Backdrop - download folder
1920 x 1080 pixels (Full HD)
1366 x 768 pixels (Standard resolution on most non-HD laptops)
4800 x 2700 pixels (Highest resolution available suitable for iMac 5K)
3840 x 2160 pixels (4K resolution)
16:10 formats for Richard Healy's Desktop Backdrop - download folder
1440 x 900 pixels (Older MacBook Air models)
2560 x 1600 pixels (MacBook 13inch and new MacBook Air models)
3072 x 1920 pixels (MacBook Pro 16inch)
2880 x 1800 pixels (MacBook Pro 15 inch)
September 2020 Desktop | Economic Security by Matthew de Kersaint Giraudeau
Matthew de Kersaint Giraudeau creates sculptures, drawings, performances and films. His work addresses ugliness and taste, negative affective states, and the ambiguities of language and objects. His current research interests include exploring the awkward aesthetic possibilities of medieval art through painting and digital animation, utilising culturally abject food and other materials to make sculpture, and understanding the formation of reactionary political sentiments through affect theory and performance.
As an Associate of Open School East, 2013- 2014, he founded The Bad Vibes Club, which is a forum for research into negative states, runs Radio Anti with Ross Jardine, and collaborates with Ben Jeans Houghton as the ARKA group. He lives and works in London.
16:9 formats for Matthew de Kersaint Giraudeau's Desktop Backdrop - download folder
1920 x 1080 pixels (Full HD)
1366 x 768 pixels (Standard resolution on most non-HD laptops)
4612 x 2594 pixels (Highest resolution available suitable for iMac 5K)
3840 x 2160 pixels (4K resolution)
16:10 formats for Matthew de Kersaint Giraudeau's Desktop Backdrop - download folder
1440 x 900 pixels (Older MacBook Air models)
2560 x 1600 pixels (MacBook 13inch and new MacBook Air models)
3072 x 1920 pixels (MacBook Pro 16inch)
2880 x 1800 pixels (MacBook Pro 15 inch)
October 2020 Desktop | Everyday Portal by Ruth Waters
Ruth Waters works with film, sound, animation, text and installation. Her practice explores the ways late capitalist networked society impacts both our levels of anxiety and our ability to imagine an alternative. She conducts extensive research for her projects, often online, where genres, time zones, generations, political struggles and reality TV exist simultaneously. Taking advantage of this open source material and its malleability; writing scripts and producing films which combine found footage with acted scenes. Her work offers critique of the murky emerging uncertainties of our digital era using dark humour and satire.
Waters is an artist from Kendal, currently living and working in London. She holds an MFA in Fine Art from Goldsmiths, University of London. Recent shows include Frequency of Magic, 아웃사이트 out_sight, Seoul (2019); Push Your Luck, Island, Brussels (2019); All About You, Koppel Project Hive, London (2019); The 6th Moscow International Biennale for Young Art, Moscow (2018); White Shadows at Wumin Art Center, Cheongju (2018); Seep at Peer Gallery, London (2017), Cacotopia at Annka Kultys Gallery, London (2017) and Solopreneur at Kingsgate Project Space, London (2016). She was the recipient of the Goldsmiths MFA Studio Award 2016 including a grant and a year residency at Acme Studios.
16:9 formats for Ruth Waters' Desktop Backdrop - download folder
1920 x 1080 pixels (Full HD)
1366 x 768 pixels (Standard resolution on most non-HD laptops)
4612 x 2594 pixels (Highest resolution available suitable for iMac 5K)
3840 x 2160 pixels (4K resolution)
16:10 formats for Ruth Waters' Desktop Backdrop - download folder
1440 x 900 pixels (Older MacBook Air models)
2560 x 1600 pixels (MacBook 13inch and new MacBook Air models)
3072 x 1920 pixels (MacBook Pro 16inch)
2880 x 1800 pixels (MacBook Pro 15 inch)
November 2020 Desktop |Analogue Desktop by Jennifer Martin
The photographs collaged in Analogue Desktop are from the set of TEETH (2019), depicting a group office space and material objects now disconnected from remote office working.
Jennifer Martin (b 1990) is based in London, working with moving image, photography and installation. Her work operates in part as interventions and articulations of social-racial dynamics and lived experiences. An underlying provocation of a call to relook threads through Martin's practice. A driving question of her recent artwork involves the role of art and media, more broadly, in the social and psychological construction of race and citizenship and its intersection with representation, agency, nostalgia, and identification. In working with performers for moving image, Martin employs a methodology of rehearsal, improvisation, and negotiation of narrative in unpacking character, language, and context.
Martin is a graduate of the Royal College of Art (2018) and the Slade School of Fine Art, University College London (2013). Martin was awarded the Stuart Croft Foundation Education Award 2018 and is part of the FLAMIN Fellowship 2019. Upcoming solo exhibitions include Primary, Nottingham, UK (2019); Turf Projects, London, UK (2019); Cypher BILLBOARDS, London, UK (2019). Recent group exhibitions include Aesthetica Art Prize, York, UK (2019); arebyte Gallery, London, UK (2018); Lychee One Gallery, London, UK (2017); and Villa Iris, Fundación Botín, Santander, ES (2015).
16:9 formats for Jennier Martin's Desktop Backdrop - download folder
1920 x 1080 pixels (Full HD)
1366 x 768 pixels (Standard resolution on most non-HD laptops)
4612 x 2594 pixels (Highest resolution available suitable for iMac 5K)
3840 x 2160 pixels (4K resolution)
16:10 formats for Jennifer Martin's Desktop Backdrop - download folder
1440 x 900 pixels (Older MacBook Air models)
2560 x 1600 pixels (MacBook 13inch and new MacBook Air models)
3072 x 1920 pixels (MacBook Pro 16inch)
2880 x 1800 pixels (MacBook Pro 15 inch)
December 2020 | The Eternity of Dragonflies by Ye Qin Zhu
Ye Qin Zhu (b. 1986) earned his BFA in 2010 at The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, New York, NY and his MFA in 2020 at Yale University, New Haven, CT. From 2014 to 2016, Zhu co-founded an art school called Redwood Art Studio. With an emphasis on exploration and personal growth, the school taught painting to the kids in the community they grew up in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. In 2012, Zhu co-created Socotra Studio, a collaborative project exploring materiality, ritual, craft, and function. From 2008 to 2012 and 2016 to 2017, Zhu was the Program Coordinator at Art Palestine International, a not-for-profit dedicated to exhibiting contemporary Palestinian art. Zhu is currently a Yale Tsai CITY Innovation Fellow, a year-long programmatic position where he will help bridge the various creative and professional communities around campus. He has exhibited extensively in the East and West coasts of the United States.
16:9 formats for Ye Qin Zhu's Desktop Backdrop - download folder
1920 x 1080 pixels (Full HD)
1366 x 768 pixels (Standard resolution on most non-HD laptops)
4612 x 2594 pixels (Highest resolution available suitable for iMac 5K)
3840 x 2160 pixels (4K resolution)
16:10 formats for Ye Qin Zhu's Desktop Backdrop - download folder
1440 x 900 pixels (Older MacBook Air models)
2560 x 1600 pixels (MacBook 13inch and new MacBook Air models)
3072 x 1920 pixels (MacBook Pro 16inch)
2880 x 1800 pixels (MacBook Pro 15 inch)