The New Gallery - Progress

Progress - The Exhibition (1.2.07)

The eleven first graduates have concluded the first year of the further studies programme at the Musrara photographic academy. The embryonic programme is fresh and innovative, supportive in the tradition of the school and eager to foster these creative talents.

Eleven youthful graduates, hopeful of touching hearts, making an impact, being remembered; looking forward to honing their personal style and language, and to finding a place on the map of Israeli art. We share their optimism, confident that at least some of them will make it. We hope that we have fostered their ability to apply their creativity in the complexities of the Israeli art world, and that we have opened up additional and varied options before them.

The “building blocks” of the programme are these student artists as they strive to arrive at their own artistic definitions and discover their own unique voices. Their personal work, their uncertainties and confusions and apprehensions, the courage to try and sometimes fail - all these inspire us in our work with them, and evoke our gratitude.

We also wish to thank the guest lecturers who appeared in the course of the year to offer their insights: Nelly Agassi, Rona Yafman, Hadass Maor, Yehudit Matzkel, Galiya |Gur-Zeev, Noah Tzadka, Eyal Peri, Shira Richter, Ronen Edelman, Gaston Zvi Itzkovitz.

The programme reflects a desire to create a worthy alternative for further studies, marking out Jerusalem as a location for work more liberated that is not motivated exclusively by the “art industry”; work less committed to the commercial galleries, the dominant trends and the market economy of the Tel Aviv art bazaar. The programme and the students also sustain the alternative artistic activity that has flourished in the city in recent years.

Avi Sabag – college principal
Dafna Ichilov – programme director