Announcement Of Major New International Artist Award: Baltic Artists’ Award
Leading international artists select future global talent
The BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead ihas announced the first iteration of a major new international artist award. The BALTIC Artists’ Award is the first worldwide biennial art award to be judged solely by artists. It has been established to recognise four artists deserving of an international platform and offers a step change moment in their career.
Four globally renowned artist judges will each select an emerging artist whose work they strongly believe in. The 2017 judges are recognised as some of the most acclaimed contemporary artists from the past twenty years: Monica Bonvicini, Mike Nelson, Pedro Cabrita Reis, and Lorna Simpson.
The selected artists will each be awarded a 13-week exhibition at BALTIC, opening on 30 June 2017, £25,000 to create new work and a £5,000 artist fee.
The biennial award will provide a vital opportunity for those selected to have a mentorship with a high-profile artist and BALTIC’s curators, and to be seen by tens of thousands of visitors. The judges represent an international perspective on some of the most exciting emerging artists today. As artists working across a wide range of media in different regions, they offer an invaluable insight into the contemporary art world. The motivation for launching the award is to celebrate the unique relationships between artists as informal mentors and figures of influence. A conversation between each judge and the artist they nominate will be recorded and published as a short film and/or publication.
Public visitors to the exhibition will be able to vote for the artists’ presentation they most strongly respond to. This will inform an additional legacy commission project enabling a deeper engagement between one of the artists and local communities in Gateshead.
