Premio Combat Prize

BIOGRAPHY -
Anna Gardiner Born London 1966
The narrative /non-narrative world of banality using quotidian objects of our collective relationship with the landscape is my sphere: not modern dystopia, nor pastoral rolling hills – these places are firmly ‘normcore’.
Everyone makes their impact felt on their surroundings, imprinting themselves and their values, tastes and loves on their particular hearth land. The quiet ambition, folly, humour, secrets, generosity and joy of countless anonymous lives are represented by caravans, pollarded trees, double chimneys, clean-swept driveways and wonky telly aerials.
As well as landscape, in the broadest sense, my work is about home in all its guises: as a place, a time, and as a sensory trigger. Though the places may feel very specific, and perhaps even familiar, none really are. They are archetypes, constructs of a nation’s memory.
I received a Masters in Fine Art at the Royal Academy Schools, London, in 1994, and subsequently lived for some seven years in New York City, before returning to live and work again in London. As well as regular solo shows in both cities, my work has been acquired for many corporate and private collections. The work has won The NatWest Prize for Art, the National Open Art Towry Award and the Benton Prize at the Discerning Eye Exhibition.