In an industry saturated with greed, Platform Foundation is a non-profit breath of fresh air. All the proceeds made from the sales of the artist’s works during the exhibition are reinvested into the programme. The profit gleaned from the exhibition will also be shared with charities that likewise support artists, in addition to charities that nurture the vulnerable youth of British society. Platform Foundation’s main goal is to promote their under-recognised artists through an annual programme of curated exhibitions, mentoring workshops and talks. Curator Kate Bryan expressed that she has “wonderful visions of seeing them in museums in the not too distant future, something they deserve”.
Generation Y is a colourful and fresh collection of exciting work based on a wide range of different mediums, styles and concepts. Despite this incongruity in subject matter and approach, each work has a distinct youthful freshness in common that is a pleasure to witness. For example, Vivien Zhang, who we had the pleasure of interviewing, manipulates paint in a way that appears digital. She uses her multi-national life experience as artistic inspiration, drawing upon visual apparatus of the West and the East, the traditional and the modern, to create an interesting fusion that very much is in tune with our rapidly globalising world.