Vieunite is now live and combines an advanced digital canvas with an online art platform.
This past Saturday (22/10/22) the Bonington Gallery in Nottingham hosted the official launch of the Vieunite platform and their new digital canvas, Textura™. This launch was celebrated with the announcement of the winners of the NTU x Vieunite Art Prize 2022, which explored the human connection with nature through a Biophilic theme.
Vieunite’s partnership with Nottingham Trent University began last year with the goal of exploring how art can impact an individual’s mental health and wellbeing though a Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) programme. Through this partnership they have been able to develop multiple other projects, such as PhD s tudent program that aims to develop a blockchain/NFT platform, and the most recent NTU x Vieunite Art Prize. This art competition invited artists from all over the world to celebrate a connection with the living world through original pieces or existing artwork optimized for the Textura™ digital canvas. The Textura™ digital canvas, which was presented during the award ceremony , features texture-accurate display technology that can replicate in detail each brushstroke and pencil line, offering an ultra-realistic look to each artwork.
The winners of the Biophilic art competition were Jonathan Armour in first place with “Specimen 09”, Ke Yan as the first runner-up with “Rusting Wildly”, and Xinyu Shao in third place with “Blurring: the means of amputation of the tree”. The winning pieces, as well as those from the top fifteen finalists, will be on display at the Atrium of Bonington Gallery in Nottingham until the 12th of November, where you will also be able to see and explore the Textura™ digital canvas.
Quotes from the winners:
Jonathan Armour (first place winner)
“I’m absolutely delighted (to have been awarded first place in the NTU x Vieunite Art Prize 2022) and a little surprised because having had a look around there is so much really good, strong art here so I’m even more delighted that my work has been chosen! I really appreciate the thought they have put into creating this competition and also then amount of time and clear interest and thought they’ve put into the selection process; because the comments made about the work from the winners were really quite insightful, so that was very pleasing to hear.
I think the Vieunite platform is a great idea! Speaking as someone who has been displaying digital art, particularly time-based video, for several years trying to display it in gallery situations and your mainstream galleries which may not be set up for displaying digital art can be quite challenging. Quite often you end up with a screen on a plinth; Textura is a much more elegant and thought trough, professional-looking way to solve that problem and show digital art in a very, very high quality and stylish way.
Textura is very smart, very elegant-looking – I can see the texture on the screen. One of my particular passions in making digital work is to make it more visceral, my own practice goes between oil painting and digital work and I’ve got a real thing about making the pixel much more visceral. So often digital work can be a little bit cold and objective. Textura’s way of displaying it brings that out in a way that I find very enjoyable and very pleasing.
The NTU x Vieunite Art Prize is a great idea, I’m really looking forward to seeing how Vieunite develops; both the Textura product and the way people can out their digital works on the screens as well as on the app. I think that’s a whole area that’s now really starting to develop and it will in part be driven by the NFT market, so I think they are getting this up at the right sort of time and they’ve come into it with a really good product and it will do very well!”
Ke Yang (second place winner)
“As an architect by profession, I rarely have the chance to share my photographic work with others, Vieunite gives me the opportunity to present and share my wider collection to a much bigger audience.”
Xinyu Shao (third place winner)
“It’s a great honour (to have been awarded third place in the NTU x Vieunite Art Prize 2022) and I think as a new platform for artists, Vieunite is a really good place for artists to present their work and be social with others.”
Lucy Nelson (UK based artist and NTU Alumni)
“I was really pleased and a bit surprised to be shortlisted for the NTU x Vieunite Art Prize 2022. I think Vieunite is an exciting new platform for practitioners who would like to reach wider audiences and are looking to make their work more accessible. As a visual artist who mainly works with sculpture, the concept of Vieunite really appealed to me. I was intrigued to see how my sculptures could work in a two-dimensional format. The quality of the digital canvas was beyond what I expected, the image was so crisp and it gave me insight into how my work can be more flexible if presented digitally.”
Celine Lundqvist (Swedish photographer, currently based in London)
“I was so honoured and happy when I heard that I was one of the finalists for the NTU x Vieunite Art Prize 2022, my project really means a lot to me and is deeply personal, so for it to be acknowledged in this way truly means a lot to me.
I’m excited to be able to work with Vieunite as a platform as I think they truly are the future of art, art is always changing, and should change at the same speed that technology is growing, and Vieunite is really on top of that, they make sure that art is not dying, but something that evolves with how the times are changing. Making it accessible online also means that anyone can take part, which I think is amazing.”
Irina Chaitsyna (from St. Petersburg, Russia)
“I’m overjoyed to be shortlisted as a finalist in the NTU x Vieunite Art Prize 2022. It’s amazing and very rewarding!
I have participated in many competitions and it is a great pleasure to open Vieunite – a wonderful platform for artists, designers, photographers and in general all creative people from all over the world.
The platform has a user-friendly interface: it’s so easy to choose your direction, upload works and, what is very important, see the feedback.
Many thanks to all creators and administrators!!!”
Fazar Roma Agung Wibisono (Bandung, Indonesia)
“I didn’t expect to be selected [as a finalist in the NTU x Vieunite Art Prize 2022] so I feel happy because I can follow it and hopefully I can continue to create better art in the future.
For the new Vieunite platform as a place to sell and display artist’s work, I think it is very good to recommend it because with this Vieunite platform, artists can sell and promote their work so that it can be enjoyed by many people and can also reach potential buyers or collectors.”
Posted on 28 October 2022
