There are just 10 days to go until the Liverpool Art Prize 2011 exhibition opens to the Public at Metal, Edge Hill Station. The exhibition begins on Friday 6 May and will run through until Saturday 11 June, with this year’s winner being announced at an Awards Ceremony on Wednesday 1 June.
Established in Liverpool’s Capital of Culture year, 2008, the prestigious exhibition showcases the best in cutting-edge contemporary art being made in Liverpool. This year’s shortlisted artists, whose work will be exhibited at Metal as part of the Art Prize, are Brendan Lyons, Bernadette O’Toole, Richard Proffitt and Markus Soukup.
Whether born and bred Liverpudlians or, like Markus Soukup, drawn here from overseas by the internationally recognised character of the city, all of the nominees chosen are based in Liverpool and are full of praise and admiration for the friendly collaborative spirit that informs and sustains Liverpool’s creative community.Whether born and bred Liverpudlians or, like Markus Soukup, drawn here from overseas by the internationally recognised character of the city, all of the nominees chosen are based in Liverpool and are full of praise and admiration for the friendly collaborative spirit that informs and sustains Liverpool’s creative community.
When asked what they find inspirational about the city, the artists’ answers included: the architecture, the welcoming feeling generated by the inhabitants and positivity in the face of adversity. Bernadette O’Toole admires Liverpool’s ‘healthy disregard for authority’ whilst Richard Proffitt pointed to the places that make it possible for emerging artists to make and show work, such as Wolstenholme Creative Space, Red Wire and The Royal Standard.
Brendan Lyons returned to Liverpool in 2002 after a decade in London and is now firmly established, exhibiting in the Bluecoat twice in recent years. His paintings are often placed directly into the urban environment, and they sit convincingly within a dual context of the contemporary built environment and the formal boundaries of Painting. What may appear to be bricks, polythene sheets, various types of tape, builder’s orange safety netting, sheets of corrugated metal or cardboard, and other discarded packaging – are in fact just unsupported paint alone. His dream project would be “to convert the whole exterior of a large building into a huge painting”. He isn’t revealing much about the work he’s creating for the Liverpool Art Prize but hints “you may have to look twice to spot it”.
Bernadette O’Toole returned to Liverpool in 2008 for the Capital of Culture year and stayed inspired by the “vitality, questioning and mischief of the vibrant cultural scene”. She took on a studio at the Bluecoat and became part of its creative community, exhibiting as part of the Independents during the Liverpool Biennial 2008. When asked about her more recent work, she said “underpinning and driving the work is a sense of anxiety - of what Heidegger calls ‘throwness’, of being thrown into the world and the overwhelming and disorientating experience of being and not being in the world.”
Richard Proffitt, the youngest of the artists, has been based at The Royal Standard since 2008. His work is inspired by and references the anthropology of ancient civilizations, teenage idols, ghost towns, curio ephemera, post-apocalyptic sci-fi films, spaghetti westerns, underground and slacker sub-culture, classroom humour and childhood memory. “At the moment I fund the majority of my work myself, buying items from flea markets, car boot sales, charity shops and eBay. Also, a lot of materials I recover from streets, fields, wastelands and car parks because of the aesthetic value of discarded material.” His work for the Liverpool Art Prize won’t really begin to exist until it is installed at Metal as the architecture of the exhibiting space, Edge Hill Station’s former Accumulator Tower, is idiosyncratic and has an atmosphere that will influence the creation. “All I can really say is that interest points currently include 50s rock ‘n’ roll, motorcycles and the Santeria religion found in Cuba”.
How Markus Soukup became a resident artist at the Bluecoat is a longer story. He hitchhiked to Liverpool as he was included in the Video Positive festival in 2000. “Luckily I arrived at the Unity Theatre 1 hour before the screening (I had underestimated the distance) I remember that weekend as very inspirational as there seemed to be a place or context for video art.” As a child Markus built puppets and theatres and moved through experiments with paintings before working with linear video in Leipzig art school. He is now known primarily for his New Media and Sound art.
The winner of this year’s Liverpool Art Prize will be awarded £2000 in addition to being given the opportunity to show their work at the Walker Art Gallery. The prize will be judged solely on the work they exhibit at Metal by a panel of expert judges including Laura Davis, Arts Editor at the Liverpool Daily Post, Paul Domela, Curator of Liverpool Biennial, Moira Lindsay (Curator from The Victoria Gallery and Museum), David Jacques (Liverpool Art Prize 2010 winner) and Paul Hyland a representative from Duncan Sheard Glass, one of the exhibition’s sponsors. There is also a £1000 People’s Choice Award chosen by the public. Visitors can cast their vote for their favourite artist at the exhibition when it opens on Friday 6 May.
Artinliverpool.com founded the Liverpool Art Prize in early 2008, it was one of the first major visual art events in the Capital of Culture year. The Art Prize is now a firmly established part of Liverpool’s annual arts diary, acknowledging the outstanding achievements of local artists and their contribution to contemporary art. It aims to promote national awareness and discussion of contemporary art in the city and to support individual artists in developing their practice. This year the exhibition coincides with the University and HE colleges degree shows as well as the re-opening of the Open Eye gallery and the Look International Photography Festival.
THE LIVERPOOL ART PRIZE 2011
Friday 6 May – Saturday 11 June Metal at Edge Hill Station, Tunnel Road, Liverpool. L7 6ND Open - Tue – Fri 2pm – 6pm, Sat 12pm – 4pm Free Entry Press private view – Thu 5 May Awards Ceremony – Wed 1 June