Threadneedle Prize - exhibition goes online today

Beck at the table by Aishan Yu
Oil on board (£3,000)
copyright the artist

Today's the day that the 87 paintings and sculpture selected for this year’s £25,000 Threadneedle Prize exhibition go online at www.threadneedleprize.com/exhibition. Images have been published however voting by the public will not start online until 1st September.

The Threadneedle Prize is the most valuable art prize awarded by votes from the public in the UK and your vote really makes a difference. The seven works shortlisted by the panel of selectors to win the valuable £25,000 Prize are also published today as well as full details about how to vote.

Details of the exhibition and event are at the end of this post. There are 87 works in the exhibition. There is just one drawing ('Corner Shop Customers' by Beatrice Haines, which is pencil on paper bags) and 11 sculptures. The rest are paintings as there are no prints this year).

"Fast becoming real art's equivalent of the Turner Prize"
The Times, May 2009

"Rival to the Turner Prize... full of constant surprises"
BBC Radio 4, Front Row

"This new prize is capable of achieving a greater good than any other"
Brian Sewell, Evening Standard

Shortlist

The shortlist is as follows:

• Jaemi Hardy - Clara with Chinese Horse
• Lucy Jones - Over the hil
• Melanie Miller - Green hydrangea
• Tim Shaw - The Middle World (who was also short-listed last year and won the selector's prize)
  
• Louis Smith - St Peter on the cross
• Sheila Wallis - self portrait
• Rose Wylie - The Manufacturers
  

The 2009 panel of selectors has included five artists:

• Daphne Todd and Michael Leonard (both highly regarded figurative artists),
  
• last year’s Threadneedle Prize winner, Nina Murdoch,
  
• Jock McFadyen, the realist and former artist in residence at The National Gallery and
  
• the artist, writer and curator, Cathy Lomax (Cathy Lomax).
  

They were joined by Desmond
Shawe-Taylor, Surveyor of The Queen’s Pictures.

The panel are solely responsible for a NEW £5,000 Emerging Artist Prize to the artist aged 18-28 who submitted the most outstanding work.

Details of the selected artists

I asked the Mall Galleries for details of the selected artists and they were very kind and supplied me the following data.

Submissions and selected artists: This year over 2,100 artists submitted work to the Threadneedle Prize and only 87 works were selected. That means around 4% of submissions were accepted. It also means that if you're good enough, you have about the same chance as getting selected as artists submitting work for the BP Portrait Award and it's probably slightly easier getting selected for the Royal Academy's Summer Exhibition!

Gender: The panel have selected 40 male and 40 female artists which is really good news for the women as many big competition panels have been biased towards men in the past. (Not an issue commented on my many - however I do the sums!)

Countries and Regions: Art competitions displaying work in London always tend to attract a disproportionate amount of entries from London and the south east simply because of the problems of physically getting work to place where work is being selected. However competitions which do regional pick-ups - as this one does - tend to fare rather better.

Submissions have to be from artists living or working in the UK, but for a break down into regions here are some details of the origins of some of the selected artists and where they live now.

Scotland

• Faye Anderson – Selkirk, Aberdeen, now Newtongrange (near Edinburgh)
• Philip Gurrey – Glasgow
• Barry McGlashan – Aberdeen
• Helen Wilson – Paisley, Glasgow
• Marie Harnett – Herfordshire, now Edinburgh

Wales

• Sarah Ball – lived in South Yorkshire, now Monmouthshire
• Joseph Paxton – grew up in Monmouthshire

Northern Ireland

• Tim Shaw (now in Cornwall)
• Sheila Wallis (now Surrey)
• Shauna Richardson (now Leicester)

Cornwall

• Tim Shaw
• Bridgette Ashton
• Jason Walker
• Lisa Wright

Artists with connections to other countries include:

• South Africa: Bronwyn Carr – Cape Town
• Australia: Gary Smith – Cheshire, Tasmania, Manchester, Florence
• China: Aishan Yu – China/ London
• Italy: Michele Del Campo – South Italy, now London
• Holland: Sara le Roy – The Hague, now London
• Norway: Marianne Morild – Norway, now London
• Germany: Sara Rossberg – Germany, now London
• Canada: Jaemi Hardy – Canada, now London

Exhibition details and event

The exhibition opens at the Mall Galleries on Wednesday 2 September 2009. Voting closes at 12 noon on Monday 14 September 2009. As last year, I'll be writing about each of the shortlisted entries after I've seen them and about the exhibition generally too.

Exhibition Event: YBAs are dead – what next? (Thursday 3 September, 6pm – 8pm)

I've had an invite to attend an event on the Thursday after the exhibition opens. A debate will be held in the gallery between leading Brit artist Bob & Roberta Smith, writer and broadcaster Brian Sewell and realist painter and Threadneedle selector Jock McFadyen. Arts columnist Karen Wright will chair the panel.

Questions up for debate include:

• Where is British art heading?
  
• Are the YBAs really dead?
  
• Who or what is going to replace them?

You can tickets (priced at £7 /concessions £5) online here.

Links: Threadneedle Prize 2009

• Threadneedle Prize Registration Opens

Links: Threadneedle Prize 2008 - Links to posts on this blog about last year's exhibition

• the exhibition for the new Threadneedle Figurative Prize (part 1) (August).
  
• Threadneedle Figurative Prize (part 2) - Green, Mills, Murdoch and Schierenberg and
• Threadneedle Figurative Prize (part 3) - Brandford, Shaw, Williams and the DVD

Exhibition/Gallery details:

• The Threadneedle Prize for painting and sculpture,
  
• Address: Mall Galleries, 17 Carlton House Terrace,London, SW1Y 5BD
• Telephone: 020 7930 6844
• email: threadneedleprize@mallgalleries.com