This is about the winner of the £20000 Columbia Threadneedle Award 2018 for contemporary figurative and representational art - and the other five artists shortlisted as finalists.
Dead End - an impeccably and impressively painted view of an urban space by Ana Schmidt (Bilbao, Spain) won the First Prize. I'm really looking forward to her solo exhibition at the Mall Galleries. I think it's going to attract a lot of attention - and a lot of collectors of paintings of urban spaces. How she manages to be an urban planning architect as well as a a very impressive painter is beyond me!
Dead End - an impeccably and impressively painted view of an urban space by Ana Schmidt (Bilbao, Spain) won the First Prize. I'm really looking forward to her solo exhibition at the Mall Galleries. I think it's going to attract a lot of attention - and a lot of collectors of paintings of urban spaces. How she manages to be an urban planning architect as well as a a very impressive painter is beyond me!
I'm enjoying the fact that I got two of the six finalists right! (Plus note my comment right at the end!)
There's one more major prize worth £10,000. The decision as to who gets that is determined by the result of the People's Vote by visitors to the exhibition
My guess is it will be between Dead End and Babel Britain (After Verhaecht). I'll certainly be torn which to vote for!
This year the sponsors of The Threadneedle Prize sought to change the way the winner is announced. So this year there was:
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| Ana Schmidt with her First Prize Award and her painting |
The Exhibition and the People's Vote Award £10,000
The exhibition of all the selected artworks is on at the Mall Galleries until 17th February.There's one more major prize worth £10,000. The decision as to who gets that is determined by the result of the People's Vote by visitors to the exhibition
My guess is it will be between Dead End and Babel Britain (After Verhaecht). I'll certainly be torn which to vote for!
The Awards Ceremony
This year the sponsors of The Threadneedle Prize sought to change the way the winner is announced. So this year there was:
- no announcement of the shortlisted finalists - until 7.30pm at the Awards Ceremony
- no announcement of the winner until 8.00pm after the interviews with the finalists
- even the winner did not know she had won beforehand!
- meaning every artist who was exhibiting knew they were in with a shout of winning or maybe getting one of the runner-up prizes
- and no dinner - and no clueless interviews by a nameless celebrity who I was not a fan of!
- a mad scramble to get photos of the artists with their pics before they left....
However, I think next time around it might be better if everything was moved back an hour so those with very long journeys and trains to catch to get home didn't shoot straight out the door after the announcement - including some of the prizewinners!
The First Prize
The winner of the First prize of £20,000 plus a solo exhibition at the Mall Galleries is Ana Schmidt. This is what I had down as a profile for her
Ana Schmidt - (Website in Spanish) born in Germany, her family moved to Vietnam and then Thailand before her sixth birthday. major in architecture and enrolled at the acclaimed Polytechnic University of Barcelona, Spain. Realistic painter who presents reality without an obvious style or embellishment. Uses sketches and painting from life + photographs and colour and composition studies. Every time I look at her painting I like it. I'll be very interested to see what it looks like in the gallery. Take a look at more of her paintings - I find them very impressive.
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| ‘Dead End’ | copyright Ana Schmidt acrylic, 165 x 114 cm £6,500 |
During generations, mythology and narratives have had influence over our view of the world. We live in a world where narratives are constructed for entertainment and merchandising, not to explain our experiences. Our world needs myths, art…Dead End is about painted histories on the walls, allows ambiguity, but it also presents a second reality, the reflections on the water.I was pretty certain this extremely impressive work was going to get shortlisted - and when I saw it in person it's even better than the website version. It was interesting when asking others in between the interviews and the announcement, a lot thought this work was going to win.
Ana Schmidt
This is the sort of painting which makes me want to learn how to paint in acrylics. It's so much better than a photorealism or photography!
The Finalists (£1,000 each)
The five finalists who each won £1,000 were all women. Yet again the women do well in this exhibition. I'm not quite sure why. Maybe more women create figurative art?
They are:
- Emily Allchurch
- Caroline Burraway
- Serena Curmi
- Cathy Lewis
- Lois Wallace
Below you can see them with their artwork (where I could get a photo) plus my profile of them which I did for the Selected Artists post. I've also got videos of the interviews but have not watched these yet - so maybe a link to these on YouTube later!
Emily Allchurch
Since completing my MA in Sculpture at the Royal College of Art in 1999, I have developed a complex digital collage technique to recreate Old Master paintings and prints in a contemporary idiom. My starting point is an intensive encounter with a city or place, to absorb an impression and gather a huge image library. From this resource, hundreds of photos are selected and meticulously spliced together to ‘construct’ my story, creating a seamless new ‘fictional’ space. The works have a resonance with place, history and culture, and deal with the passage of time and the changes to a landscape, fusing contemporary life with a sense of history, and an underlying social narrativeEmily Allchurch
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| Babel Britain (After Verhaecht)| copyright Emily Allchurch Transparency on bespoke LED lightbox (edition of 20, 10 available), Size: 128 x 140 cm £12,000 |
Emily Allchurch - trained as a sculptor, First Class (Hons.) degree in Fine Art from the Kent Institute of Art & Design – Canterbury in 1996, and an MA from the Royal College of Art in 1999. Now uses photography and digital collage to reconstruct Old Master paintings and prints to create contemporary narratives. Her work Babel Britain (After Verhaecht) is a Transparency on bespoke LED lightbox. This is MY TIP for A PRIZE - because there is an explicit nod to art history, it's clever and technically much more than proficient, uses contemporary visual art media and provides an intelligent comment on contemporary society. It's a contemporary figurative artwork with a BIG 'C'.
Caroline Burraway
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| Samuel, The Jungle, Calais | copyright Caroline Burraway Charcoal, 160 x 135 cm £5,000 |
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| Caroline Burraway with her charcoal drawing of Samuel |
This wonderful charcoal drawing had a very effective acrylic protection. However unfortunately it was competing with both the extra lights for the awards evening, the bar and the rest of the artwork in terms of reflections and was really difficult to photograph.
Caroline Burraway - BA in Drawing from Camberwell and an MA from central St Martins. Her work has previously been selected for art competition exhibitions. I like her charcoal drawings
Serena Curmi
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| 'Bedlam' Case Studies | copyright Serena Curmi Oil on board, 28 x 43 cm £1,800 |
A six-part piece depicting case studies of patients of the infamous Bethlem Royal Hospital, (from which the word 'bedlam' was derived), during the late 1800's. Reference was taken from archival photographs held at the hospital and from the book 'Presumed Curable' by Colin Gale and Robert Howard. It is not known why the photographs were takenSerena Curmi
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| Serena Curmi with her Bedlam 'Case Studies' |
Serena was there with her very cute, very small and very well behaved baby.
I am, of course a dab hand of photographing babies at Awards Ceremonies and coaxed a half grin from her daughter!
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| Serena Curmi with husband and daughter |
Serena Curmi - Graduated from Falmouth. Works as a full time artist at Jamaica Street Studios in Bristol after an earlier career as an illustrator. Regular exhibitor at Affordable Art shows in London and Bristol.
Cathy Lewis
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| Nowhere near Gotham | copyright Cathy Lewis Cast marble and digital print (edition of 6, 3 available), Size: 200 x 200 x 150 cm £12,000 |
Cathy Lewis - Studied at Glasgow School of Art , Falmouth Art School and University of the West of England. Works from a studio on Spike Island. Says very little about her work on her website which is a pity.
Lois Wallace
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| Perfect Day | copyright Lois Wallace Oil on copper, 29 x 34 cm £1,800 |
Referencing places that are inspired by the sublime, the epic, and the overwhelming, my paintings are concerned with depicting movement and stillness, presence and absence. I am interested in creating a narrative that is beautiful, but at the same time unsettling. I work in oil on unprimed copper. This is a lustrous support to use, as the copper glows through the layers of paint to create light and atmosphere. The connection with the history of painting through the use of traditional techniques is important, and my narratives develop this in a contemporary context.Lois Wallace
Lois Wallace - Lois Wallace is a contemporary British Artist. Working with Paint on copper and paper, with galleries in London and Berlin. Trained at the Slade School of Art. Exhibited widely in the UK and abroad. Senior Lecturer in Fine Art at Birmingham School of Art, Birmingham City University until 2017.
Lois Wallace with her small painting
Panel of Selectors
This year’s Panel of Selectors comprised three women and the Chair of the panel - Lewis McNaught, Director of Mall Galleries (web page). The other panel members were:
- Pippa Stockdale, Managing Director of The Fine Art Society, London (web Page)
- Jennifer McRae, award winning portrait artist (web page) and one of my favourite painters!
- Helen Pheby, Senior Curator at Yorkshire Sculpture Park (web page)
- The Review of the Exhibition - and what I liked
Exhibition Review
I'll also be doing
- a Review of the exhibition later this week - and the changes this year compared to previous years.
- to do my shortlist of what I liked. However the selectors picked two of the ones I had identified as definitely shortlist able - including the winner - even without seeing them in the gallery.
ARCHIVE - The First Nine Years of the Threadneedle Prize
- Overview of the artists selected for The ColumbiaThreadneedle Prize 2016 - including images and links to artists' websites.2018 Threadneedle Prize
- Columbia Threadneedle Prize returns
- The Columbia Threadneedle Prize 2018 - Call for Entries
- Selected artists for Columbia Threadneedle Prize Exhibition 2018
2016 Threadneedle Prize
- The Columbia Threadneedle Prize - Call for Entries
- Selected Artists - The Columbia Threadneedle Prize 2016
- The Columbia Threadneedle Prize 2016: Shortlisted Artists
- Lewis Hazelwood-Horner wins £20000 Threadneedle Prize 2016
- Threadneedle Exhibition 2016 - my favourites
2014 Threadneedle Prize
- Review: Threadneedle Prize Exhibition 2014
- Tina Jenkins wins Threadneedle Prize 2014
- Threadneedle Prize 2014 - The Shortlist
- The Threadneedle Prize 2014 - what's changed and how to enter
2013 Threadneedle Prize
- Clare McCormack and Lisa Wright win Threadneedle Prize 2013
- Threadneedle Prize 2013 Exhibition - Review
- Threadneedle Prize 2013 - Shortlist announced
- One month left to enter £30000 Threadneedle Prize
- Threadneedle Prize 2013 - Selected Artists
2012 Threadneedle Prize
- Call for Entries for £30000 Threadneedle Prize 2012
- Threadneedle Prize 2012: Analysis of entries
- Threadneedle Prize 2012: names of selected artists
- Threadneedle Prize 2012 - Exhibition now Online
- Threadneedle Prize 2012 - Shortlisted Artists
- Review: Threadneedle Prize Exhibition 2012
- Threadneedle Prize 2012: The Making a Mark Select Six - An alternative shortlist for the Threadneedle Prize 2012.
- Threadneedle Prize 2012 - the Award Winners - Ben Greener wins Threadneedle Prize 2012. Robert Truscott wins People's Choice Award 2012.
2011 Threadneedle Prize
- Threadneedle Prize 2011 - a new selection process
- Shortlist for Threadneedle Prize 2011 dominated ...
- Threadneedle Prize: The Making a Mark Select ...
- Review: Threadneedle Prize Exhibition 2011
- Henriette Simson wins Threadneedle Prize 2011
2010 Threadneedle Prize
- Patricia Cain wins £25,000 Threadneedle Prize 2010
- Threadneedle - just another art prize in 2010?
- Shortlist for £25000 Threadneedle Prize 2010 announced
- Threadneedle Prize 2010 Exhibition opens today
- My Threadneedle Prize shortlist
2009 Threadneedle Prize
2008 Threadneedle Prize
- Nina Murdoch wins the Threadneedle Figurative Prize 2008 - which I picked out as the winner at the press preview and was the very first person to cast the "people's vote" for the winner!
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