How to develop your Local Gallery
Contemporary Art Society Annual Award for
Museums, commission to collect, 2010
The winners of the 2010 award are The Hepworth
Wakefield and Wolverhampton Art Gallery in association with Film and
Video Umbrella for their proposal with the scottish artist Luke
Fowler.
The Hepworth Wakefield and Wolverhampton Art Gallery made the joint
bid as part of their respective collection development strategies. The
award of £60,000 was presented on Tuesday 9th November and will enable
the two museums to commission Luke Fowler to make a new work that will
be acquired jointly for their collections.
Fowler’s starting point will be the writings and rarely-seen
archive materials from the radical socialists Edward Palmer Thompson,
Raymond Williams and Richard Hoggart. Fowler is inspired by their teaching
and writing which was honed in the working-class communities in the North
and the Midlands. His research and eventual film work will
explore how the influence of these committed intellectuals reverberated
widely in the post-war cultural arena, eventually giving rise to an emerging
discipline of ‘cultural studies’, that, in its focus on popular art forms
and vernacular traditions, posed considerable challenges to the established
academic elite of that time.
The Award has been made possible through the generous philanthropy of
the Sfumato Foundation.
Luke Fowler (b.1978, Glasgow) works with film and installation, collaborating
widely with sound artists, academics, and filmmakers. His work can be
divided into two strands: composite film portraits of historically marginalised
figures such as R.D. Laing and investigations into the deeply ingrained
structures and predispositions that underpin our perceptual and phenomenological
experience of image and sound. He exhibits nationally and internationally,
including solo exhibitions at the Serpentine Gallery in 2009 and Kunsthalle
Zurich in 2008, and has been the recipient of several prizes and awards
including the Paul Hamlyn Award 2010, the Jarman Award in 2008 and the
Dewar Prize in 2004. He is currently showing work in The British Art
Show 7.
Paul Hobson, Director, Contemporary Art
Society commented, "The Contemporary Art Society is delighted to
present the Annual Award for 2010 to The Hepworth Wakefield and Wolverhampton
Art Gallery to realise a major new commission by acclaimed artist, Luke
Fowler. Museums face challenging times, and with the support of the Sfumato
Foundation we act as a conduit for highly strategic philanthropy to strengthen
curatorial capacity in museums and support new works by artists entering
public collections for local audiences no matter where they live. We
look forward to seeing how this exciting collaboration develops.'"
Link to
Contemporary Art Society's website and further information about the
Annual Award.
Link to
The Hepworth Wakefield.
Link to
Wolverhampton Art Gallery.
Link to Film and Video Umbrella.
Note: The British Art Show 7 will be presented at venues in Glasgow during the Spring of 2011.
Background Information for news item
The Contemporary Art Society is celebrating its centenary this year.
Founded in 1909 by a group of private philanthropists, the Contemporary Art Society has been buying works of art and donating them to British museums and galleries for nearly 100 years. It aims to support contemporary artists and ensure that important contemporary works are made available to the widest possible audiences across the country.
Over its 100-year history, the Society has acquired works by artists including Picasso, Gauguin, Moore, Bacon, Caro, Gilbert & George, Tracey Emin, Grayson Perry and Mark Wallinger. This has often been the first time the work of this living artist has been given to a public collection.
Ayr's Maclaurin Trust was a Museum Member of the Contemporary Art Society between 1988 and 1997. At that time membership was limited to 60 museums and the Maclaurin was invited to become a member on the basis of their commitment to collecting and exhibiting contemporary art.
Museum Membership is a subscription scheme and members receive a range of benefits in return for an annual subscription to the programme of Fine Art acquisitions or the Craft acquisitions programme.
During the period of their membership, the Maclaurin Trust received gifts of work by the Austrian artists Hodicke and a large work on canvas by Michael Craig Martin.
Today, the Contemporary Art Society has 64 member galleries, eight of these in Scotland.
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For further information on the Contemporary Art Society, including services for individual members, please follow this LINK
For further information about the Maclaurin Art Collection, please follow this LINK