Sobey Long-List Artists Each Win $25,000
There will be no winner of the $100,000 Sobey Art Award this year because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Instead, the 25 artists on the award's long list will each receive $25,000, the Sobey Art Foundation and the National Gallery of Canada announced Wednesday.
Organizers are dispensing with the usual process of selecting five finalists who exhibit their work, with the announcement of the winner at a gala. Also gone this year are awards of international residencies.
Usually, the winner receives $100,000 while each of the other four artists on the short list gets $25,000, with $2,000 each to the remaining 20 artists on the long list.
“We are so proud to be able to celebrate the work of these 25 talented artists,” said Rob Sobey, chair of the Sobey Art Foundation, noting the challenging realities artist are facing during the pandemic.
"As we all adjust to the changes in our everyday lives, we recognize how artists and their art can bring us together," he said. "Our sincere wish is that this year’s long-list artists will utilize this additional support to continue to do so.”
The long list artists are:
WEST COAST & YUKON
Michele Di Menna
PRAIRIES & NORTH
asinnajaq
ONTARIO
QUEBEC
ATLANTIC
The award will return to its usual process once permitted by public health guidelines
The jury considered more than 100 nominations for the long list. It called the work of the long-listed artists "distinctly dynamic, resonant, and compelling."
"They create new relationships and vocabularies that value specificity with regard to personal, geographic, cultural or socio-historical perspectives, yet open themselves onto broader forms of connection.
The jury is composed of Matthew Hills, director/curator of the Grenfell Art Gallery, for the Atlantic region; Mary-Dailey Desmarais, curator of international modern and contemporary art at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, for the Quebec region; Frances Loeffler, curator of the Oakville Galleries, for the Ontario region; Jaimie Isaac, curator, Indigenous and contemporary art at the Winnipeg Art Gallery, for the Prairies and North region; Henry Heng Lu, curator of Centre A: Vancouver International Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, for the West Coast and Yukon; and international juror, Carly Whitefield, assistant curator of international art (film) at Tate Modern in London. The chair of the jury is Josée Drouin-Brisebois, senior curator of contemporary art at the National Gallery of Canada.
Source: Sobey Art Foundation, National Gallery of Canada
