C108
Update
Awards time
• Katie Holten has been awarded the
Fulbright Diageo Scholarship for Visual and Performing Arts
for 2004-2005. From September 2004 Holten will be based in
New York and affiliated with Cornell University while she
undertakes her independent research. Holten has also been
awarded research funding from the Contemporary Initiatives
Programme of the Wellcome Trust in London. The artist's contribution
to the 2003 Venice Biennale is discussed by Regina Gleeson
in the article on pages 60 - 63 of this issue; there is also
an interview between Holten and Gleeson at recirca.com/articles/katieholten.
|
|
|
Sonia Shiel: Party candy, oil
on canvas, 157 x 152 cm; courtesy the artist / Royal
Hibernian Academy
|
• Dublin-based painter Sonia Shiel
has taken the third Hennessy Craig Scholarship of 10,000 euro.
She was presented with the award at the prize-giving ceremony
on 16 April at the Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin. Her painting
Party candy was selected by the Academy as an Ôoutstanding
work' in this year's 174th Annual Exhibition. The scholarship
is designed to "enable a painter to pursue a course of self-determined
or formal study in Ireland or abroad."
• Karl Grimes has been awarded a
Wood Research Fellowship by the Francis C. Wood Institute
for the History of Medicine at the College of Physicians,
Philadelphia, USA. Grimes' research will focus on the important
medical collections at the Institute and the Mutter Museum
in Philadelphia as part of an on-going art-and-science exhibition
and publication project. Grimes' work has consistently sought
to explore new perspectives on medical and scientific matters.
• Amanda Coogan has won this year's
AIB Prize. 20,000 euro has been given to the artist to cover
the publication of a catalogue, as a contribution towards
the costs of an exhibition in Limerick City Gallery of Art
and as an award to the artist to facilitate production of
new work for the exhibition.
|
|
|
Xu Bing: Where
Does the Dust Collect Itself (detail), installation
shot; photo Jeff Morgan; courtesy Artes Mundi
|
• Chinese-born, US-based artist
Xu Bing has won the inaugural Artes Mundi art prize using
dust collected from Ground Zero, New York. The prize has brought
the artist an impressive £40,000, twice the amount awarded
by the Turner Prize.
Bing was in the city on the day the Twin
Towers were hit by terrorists. He gathered and bagged a handful
of the dust from the street close to Ground Zero to bring
to Cardiff as one of ten finalists for the prize. He moulded
the dust into the form of a small white doll in order to avoid
arousing the suspicions of customs officers, then the white
powder was reduced to dust once again using a coffee grinder.
It was then blown onto the floor of the gallery and stencilled
into ancient Zen text As there is nothing from the first /
Where does the dust collect itself?
The organisers of the Artes Mundi exhibition
hope the new prize - billed as the world's richest art prize
- will not only raise the profile of Wales in the international
artworld, but come to rival highly recognised awards such
as the Turner Prize.
CIRCA Art Magazine Googles to the top
|
|
|
Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Vectorial
Elevation, 2004, web-camera images showing Felicity
Ford's personal light-sculpture design
|
CIRCA's website, recirca.com,
has been on the edge for a few weeks now: is it the number-one
art-magazine website in the world? That may seem like a wild
boast, but we can back it up: enter 'art magazine' into a
Google search, and see where recirca.com
turns up - sometimes first, sometimes second of around eight
million pages.
Whatever the result you get, it is still
the case that our website is getting over 600 unique visitors
per day, who clock up over 1,000 session per day. Surf the
site for daily-updated listings and news items, plus a vast
amount of other content.
Burglary leaves Catalyst Arts stranded
- can you help?
Catalyst, the artists' cooperative, lost
all its new computer equipment, valued at £7,000, after a
break-in recently at their Belfast premises. The loss of this
equipment, vital for administrative and gallery needs, causes
serious problems for the running of the 2004-05 programme,
which includes arts activities aimed at youth groups, film
workshops for the public, and site-specific artwork that focuses
on regenerating neglected areas of the city. To get back on
their feet the organisation will be holding fund-raising events
- music, art and film - throughout the year.
New art magazine to launch in Scotland
It's long been a pity not to be getting
news, reviews, etc., in a magazine that was primarily devoted
to what was happening in Scotland. The free newssheet, Variant,
has been doing the job to an extent, but its remit has been
much wider than the visual arts. Last year the Scottish Arts
Council put out to tender for proposals for a new visual-arts
magazine for the country. The List, the Glasgow- and
Edinburgh-based listings magazine ("Scotland's top-selling
entertainment, events and lifestyle magazine"), has won the
tender, and has advertised for an editor. The new magazine
will hopefully launch in September.
PS1 gone
There was much upset a while back when
the Arts Council of Northern Ireland (ACNI) decided to discontinue
its participation in the PS1 scheme, but now it looks as though
ACNI were clairvoyant. The PS1 award had allowed an artist
from Northern Ireland to have a studio within the PS1 complex
in Queens, New York. The Republic has also been sending an
artist to the PS1 scheme, and the PS1 award has often been
thought of as the highest that can be given to a visual artist,
north or south. PS1 itself, apart from studios, is a series
of sometimes small, sometimes cavernous exhibition spaces;
the name comes from the former use of the building ('Public
School 1').
Now, following the integration of the
PS1 complex into New York's Museum of Modern Art, the PS1
Studio scheme is now to be chopped. A shame.
