John Moores Contemporary Painting Prize 2010

You can register to enter the John Moores Contemporary Painting Prize any time up until Friday 19th February 2010.

First held in 1957, the John Moores Contemporary Painting Prize is the UK's best-known painting competition and is named after Sir John Moores (1896 - 1993), the founder of the prize.

The John Moores Contemporary Painting Prize is an open submission competition available to all UK-based artists working with paint. Previous winners have included David Hockney, Peter Doig and Michael Raedecker.

Littlewoods founder Sir John Moores, a keen painter, started the exhibition in 1957. In the last 50 years nearly 2,000 artists have exhibited. More than 100 people have sat on the jury including singer Jarvis Cocker, writer Germaine Greer and artists Peter Blake, Tracey Emin and Jake and Dinos Chapman. The Moores family remain involved through the Walker’s partnership with the John Moores Liverpool Exhibition Trust.

This competition - held every two years - aims to support artists and bring to Liverpool the best in contemporary painting from across the UK.

The judging will take place throughout 2010 and will result in an exhibition at Liverpool's Walker Art Gallery from 18 September 2010 to 3 January 2011 as part of the Liverpool Biennial

Liverpool Biennial is among the most successful art commissioning agencies in the UK, best known for presenting the UK’s largest festival of contemporary visual art. Established in 1998, 2010 will see the 6th festival take place between 18th September and 28th November

The image below won the Visitors' Choice Award at John Moores 25 in 2008.

Special Relativity (2000-07) by Julian Brain
Oil on linen, 72.5 x 83 cm
copyright the artist / used with permission

How to enter

Entries have to be original, new or recent paintings within a set size, designed to hang on walls, by someone who lives, or is based, in the United Kingdom. Full conditions are on the website. Judges will see all shortlisted artworks at Stage 2 of the judging process.

These are the links to important information about the competition in 2010:

• Final Call for Entries
• Conditions of entry
• How to register
• Frequently asked questions
• Jury

The final deadline for artists to register is 19 February 2010 – online registration can be found on www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/johnmoores. Images must be sent in by 5 March 2010 and winners will be announced at the opening of the exhibition.

You are asked to not submit images until you have received Confirmation of Registration.

You can now follow the progress of the competition at: http://twitter.com/JohnMoores2010.

Awards and Fee

The trade-off between fee to enter and the size of the first prize looks about right to me. However some may think that the runner-up cash prizes are a tad stingy compared to those associated with some other leading art competitions in the UK.

• There is a first prize of £25,000 (cash prize) and four further prizes of £2500 each for runners up. The Visitors’ Choice prize this year is £2010.
• The competition is £25 to enter.

Jurors

The only thing we can be certain of is that selection is never about "the best" whatever that is and is always about what appeals to individual jurors and then whatever sort of compromise they can come up with to satisfy themselves and their ethics and aesethetics.

So, if you are so minded, see if you can work out what sort of work is likely to appeal to this year's jury. The jurors this year are listed below - the words belong the John Moores people and the links are mine - I ggest starting with the online images for the painters.

Jurors’ biographies

Gary Hume (images online)
Gary Hume was born in Kent in 1962 and lives and works in London and upstate New York, USA. He is renowned for paintings distinguished by a bright palette, reduced imagery and flat areas of seductive colour. Hume first received critical acclaim with a body of work known as the 'Door' paintings. His recent solo shows include Kunsthaus Bregenz (2004) and the Kestnergesellschaft, Hannover (2004). Recent group shows include Tate Britain, London (2004) and Louisiana Museum, Denmark (2004).

Alison Watt (images online)
Alison Watt was born in Greenock in 1965 and studied at Glasgow School of Art from 1983-88. From 2006 to 2008, Watt was the Associate Artist at The National Gallery in London, the youngest artist in the scheme's history. Her solo exhibition 'Phantom' (2008) explored her enduring fascination with one particular painting in their collection, Zurbaran's 'St. Francis in Meditation' (1635-9). In 2003, she was shortlisted for the Jerwood Painting Prize and was awarded an OBE in 2008.

Ged Quinn (images online)
Ged Quinn was born in Liverpool in 1967. He studied at Ruskin School of Drawing, Oxford and Slade School of Fine Art. He has had many solo shows including 'Utopia Dystopia' at Tate St Ives (2004) and 'My Great Unhappiness Gives me a Right to your Benevolence' at Wilkinson Gallery, London (2007). His painting 'There's a House in my Ghost' was exhibited in the John Moores 25 exhibition in 2008. He also exhibted work at Tate Liverpool as part of the Liverpool Biennial during the same year.

Goshka Macuga (images online)
Goshka Macuga was born in Poland in 1967 and lives and works in London. She studied at Wojciech Gerson School of Art, Warsaw; Central Saint Martins School of Art, London; and Goldsmiths College, London. Goshka Macuga has been nominated for her solo exhibition 'Objects in Relation', 'Art Now' at Tate Britain and her contribution to the 5th Berlin Biennial for Contemporary Art. In 2008 she was nominated for the Turner Prize and in 2009 exhibited work at the Venice Biennale.

Sir Norman Rosenthal
Sir Norman Rosenthal was born in Cambridge in 1944 and is a freelance curator and writer. He became Exhibitions Secretary of the Royal Academy of Arts in 1977, where he stayed for 30 years, overseeing loan exhibitions and working with distinguished curators. Sir Norman Rosenthal has been awarded the highest national honours and decorations from Italy, Germany, France and the Mexico. In 2009 he contributed an essay to the Anish Kapoor exhibition catalogue which was written to accompany the artist's show at the Royal Academy.

PS For those of you are more inclined towards portraiture don't forget that the entry to the BP National Portrait Award closes on Sunday 14th February. Why not send them your love too? ;) See BP Portrait Award 2010 - Call For Entries

Links:
Newspaper articles about John Moores

• Peter McDonald wins John Moores prize | The Guardian (September 2008)
  
• Contemporary painters are like court jesters by Jonathan Jones | The Guardian - The John Moores painting prize shortlist makes a mockery of art - why are today's painters too cowardly to rise to the challenge of the masters?