Jo BrownThe Northern Art Prize now in its fifth year at Leeds Art Gallery, is the culmination of a selection process that begins with twelve arts professional from across the North of England to nominate two artists who must be based in the North. Four judges – this year it is Caroline Douglas, (Head of the Arts Council collection), Tim Marlow, (writer, broadcaster, Director of Exhibitions at the White Cube Gallery), Simon Starling, (artist), and Simon Wallis, (Director, The Hepworth Wakefield).
The nominators and judges change each year. The shortlisted artists then work with Sarah Brown, the Curator at Leeds Art Gallery, to put together a show of recent and new works.
The criterion is to present some of the most original, thoughtful and beautifully crafted work being made currently in our region. This is a fine enough aim in itself. To present it as a competition with a considerable money prize and the opportunity to have a vote puts it in a different league in the public consciousness.
A huge amount of attention is suddenly focused on what these artists have produced, which leads – it must be hoped – to a greater enjoyment of visual art of the present and the past.
Art needs time. Time to be inspired. Time to be produced. And time to be looked at and seen. All of the shortlisted artists have taken and given that time. None more so, perhaps, than James Hugonin, who takes a year to make just one of his huge paintings. The canvas is divided into a grid of tiny oblongs. Colour is planned and carefully selected to fill them in, a technique that ‘makes Bridget Riley seem short of patience’, to quote Alfred Hickling’s ‘Guardian’ review of 10th January. The results are, he says, ‘a mixture of intuition and logic, are beautiful and meditative.’
Richard Rigg’s minimalist work combines admirable craftsmanship with new meanings in the making and manipulating of everyday objects such as tables and chairs. The everyday and the familiar seen afresh is also intrinsic to Leo Fitzmaurice’s work.
He has designed and built a small shed-like structure in which you sit to watch a loop of images from the urban environment captured on his mobile phone over seven years – just things that “stop you in your tracks”, many of them witty (I thought) and with a thought-provoking sub-text. For the other half of his exhibit, he raided the gallery’s store rooms for ‘academic’ landscape paintings, perhaps the sort of art I might tend to pass by rather swiftly, and has hung them, regardless of their ornate frames, to form a sort of continuous horizon. It makes you look. And think.
Liadin Cook’s highly individual work too, in sculpture and drawing, uses disparate materials, (clay, wax, found objects, her curiosity, the past), to ask some questions about the world around us and what it means to be human.
The winner of the Northern Art Prize will be announced on Thursday 19th January. Who do you think should win?
If you can’t get to see the exhibition in person you can watch a video made last year in which the four nominating curators and the four finalists talk about their work from their studios. You can see something of their working process , hear about the inspiration behind the work and see other work that is not included in this exhibition. You can vote online for your choice here and the winner of the public vote will also be announced on Thursday.
The value is in all the conversations about Art and artists.
