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| View of one of the six individual exhibitions at the Mall Galleries |
If you're unable to get to see the show, you can
- view the online artwork catalogue and
- also read my past reviews and view the sort of artwork which has been selected in previous years - with the different sets of curators they have each year - see the archive of my posts dating back to 2008 at the end of this post.
Some exhibition statistics provided by the organisers
This year there are 465 works by 237 artists on show
- 75% of the artists and 55% of the works have come from the open submission. Typically if you see groups of work by the same artist in this exhibition it's a very good indication they have been "invited" to exhibit as opposed to "selected" from the open entry.
- In terms of types of artwork selected for the exhibition:
- Painting and drawing make up over 60% of the works,
- mixed media and sculpture about 15%, and
- printmaking about 8%.
2017 Award Winners
This year there has been some very sloppy labelling of artwork in the exhibition and on the website. It's such a privilege to get selected and then such a disappointment when winning a prize if the right prize is not identified either in the gallery and/or on the website. The numbers are there for a reason - to get it right.
This is the list of prizewinners. Those that have numbers with an asterisk next to them were selected from the open submission.
11 of the 16 prizes went to artists selected from the open entry. This breaks down as:
- 6 of the 8 purchase prizes (75%) went to open entrants
- 2 of the 2 other sponsor prizes (100%) went to artists selected from the open entry
- 4 of the 7 regional prizes (57%) went to open entrants
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| Asterion by Jill Desborough £1,200 SOLD |
First, many thanks to the Discerning Eye for another lovely show and to Elmo Hood and Simon Tait for picking the pieces. There was such a good vibe there on PV night! Getting the prize was wonderfully encouraging. You have to harden yourself to a fair number of (kindly worded) rejections from open shows every year so it means an awful lot to get accepted and then the prize was an extra affirmation to keep on submitting!
The Purchase Prizes
These are prizes where the prize funds the purchase of the work. It's only just occurred to me that it could make a lot of sense to price your work to match the value of one of the Purchase Prizes! (Duh!)
The ING Purchase Prize £5,000
This year this was awarded to a painting by Rick Garland, one of the artists selected by Miranda Richardson.
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| ING Purchase Prize £5000 Rick Garland Urban 1 6/8 Acrylic on canvas, 20x20 inches, (Invited by Miranda Richardson) |
The DE Founder's Purchase Prize (in honour of Michael Reynolds) £2500
The Discerning Eye has its own collection of works and new work(s) are added to this collection each year by purchasing a work(s) from the main exhibition - the Founders' Purchase Prize.
This year it was shared by two artists: Jill Desborough and Patrick Shart - both of whom were selected via the open entry. I confess I never saw the label next to Patrick's print Mr Hulot 2/82* which is why there is only one image below
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| DE Founder's Prize Jill Desborough Danse Macabre 3/12* 17 x 19 x 12 inches, Mixed media £1950 |
- Like all 3D pieces there are problems with seeing them if the background is busy - and this one has a VERY busy background. (I really struggled to get a decent picture and the one above could have been so much better with the right background). A much plainer background (or a higher plinth?) is needed to be able to appreciate the level and quality of detail in the figures.
- The fact that the website prize listing links to the image of the wrong piece is also very unfortunate.
- This is compounded by the fact that the photo of the correct piece on the ING DE website is far too dark and absolutely dreadful!
The DE Chairman's Purchase Prize
This Purchase Prize was won by Camilla Dowse (open entry)
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| DE Chairman's Purchase Prize £1000 Camilla Dowse Sussex Place, W2 1/30* 12x12 inches, Acrylic on gesso £450 SOLD |
The Meynell Fenton Prize £1000
Carne Giffiths, an invited artist, won this prize - and has a fascinating artist statement and is extremely active in exhibiting. He was opening a solo show over in Dubai last week!
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| The Meynell Fenton Prize £1000 Noemi 3/21 by Carne Griffiths 9x19 inches, Ink, tea and graphite on Bockingford watercolour paper £1,200 sold |
The Humphreys Purchase Prize £750
I so wanted to move this sculpture of a Secretary Bird (hence the title) by Victoria Atkinson (open entry) around when trying to photograph it. Again, almost impossible to see against the background..... She looks so much nicer on Victoria's website!
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| The Humphreys Purchase Prize £750 Miss Jones 1/1* by Victoria Atkinson 9x4 inches, Bronze £680 SOLD |
Parker Harris Print Purchase Prize £500
This prize is sponsored by the organisers of the exhibition. Unfortunately this work is NOT the work that's identified as the winner on the website link in the Prizes Table - where they have chosen to highlight 3/24. (How difficult is it to make sure that a link in the prizes table goes to the correct work?)
Kaori Homma seems to use a technique I've never heard of before - fire etching. I looked it up and I'm still none the wiser.... Kaori is an Associate Lecturer, University of Arts London
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| Parker Harris Print Purchase Prize £500 Under the foreign sky IV 3/25* by Kaori Homma 17x14 inches, Fire, acid and water on paper £475 |
The Wright Purchase Prize £500
Diana Evers's open entry won this prize. This was a fascinating work and it was difficult to work out how it was made. It turned out it's a digital print on what looked like an aluminium board. I think there's been a fair bit of manipulation in Photoshop or similar because as soon as I realised it was a print I began to recognise some of the techniques.
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| The Wright Purchase Prize £500 Tales in Freshwater 2/35* by Diana Evers Digital C.type print, 20x20 inches £495 |
The DE Sculpture & 3D Work Prize £250
I'm bemused as to which Jane Morgan won this prize. I can't find any evidence of a Jane Morgan working in bronze.
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| Discerning Eye Sculpture and 3D Work Prize And then there was one 4/43* by Jane Morgan 6x4x4 inches, Bronze (Selenium & Copper), oils, acrylic lacquer.£12,000 |
St Cuthbert's Mill Award - paper to the value of £250
This collage piece by U M C Packer won this prize. No website in evidence - I was left wondering whether this name was a pseudonym.
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| St Cuthberts Mill Award² £250 The Sea, The Sea No 15/44* by U M C Packer 15x12 inches, acrylic, collage on paper, £450 |
The Regional Prizes
You'll note that winning a regional prize often results in a sale as well - if the purchase price is a reasonable sum for a small work!
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| East Anglia Regional Prize £250 'In The Starting Gate' (Alexandra Park) 2/83* by Michael Smee 16x14 inches, Acrylic £670 (SOLD) |
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| London & South East Regional Prize £250 Untitled figure (Taya sketch) 5/21* by Andrew Holmes 12x16 inches, Oil on paper £1250 SOLD |
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| Midlands Regional Prize £250 Winter Coastline 6/11 by Deborah Grice 19x13 inches, Oil on canvas, £750 SOLD |
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| North of England Regional Prize £250 Sarah Jane Bellwood Endymion 1/4* 10x8 inches, Acrylic on wooden panel £500 SOLD |
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| Scotland Regional Prize £250 Allan MacDonald Fragments, Winter, NW 4/40* 10x8 inches, Oil £850 |
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| Wales Regional Prize £250 Nathan Ford Anna 11.14 2/44 15x12 inches, Oil and pencil £1800 |
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| West Country Regional Prize £250 Paul McGowan The side effects of skipping 3/41 Pen, pencil, acrylic, ink on vintage Edwardian paper, 16x18 inches £3200 |
The Curator's Exhibitions
The exhibition somehow looked different to me this year. I had the impression that it was more figurative with fewer abstracted works.
I couldn't work out whether it was the change in the curators or the a change in the works submitted via the open entry. It did occur to me that maybe this analysis might have been influential Discerning Eye (1990-2016) - which artists have shown the most?
I also noticed that the pricing varied between the exhibition and websites and gallery sites for the same or very similar/sized work. Artists need to remember that we're all capable of comparing artwork online.....
Artist - Anne Magill (70 artworks)
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| A section of Anne Magill's display |
Artist - Elmo Hood (76 artworks)
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| A very busy looking display by Elmo Hood |
To me it felt very crowded. I think he really needed the whole of the Threadneedle Space - but I suspect he got walloped by the need for somewhere to put coats on event evenings.....
Collector - Ellen Bertrams (70 artworks)
I was rather distracted by the fact Ms Bertrams had selected a not very good "trying to be like Antony Green" artist and a rather better "trying to be like Peter Doig artist". I'm not a fan of artists who try to be like other more popular artists and seeing them tends to make me switch off. This probably accounts for the fact I can't remember a lot about this exhibition.
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| Ellen Bertram's exhibition |
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| I LOVED the line drawings on the left by Jonathan Polkest |
....and I quite liked the books - because I'm a bit of a book fiend! The ones on the left are by Ian Robinson. Ian worked in the Oil & Gas Industry until moving to London in 2007 when he started at Wimbledon College of Art to study painting. He graduated in 2011 with 1st Class Honours.
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| Books selected by Ellen Bertram |
Collector - Miranda Richardson (52 artworks)
I liked Miranda Richardson's exhibition the best. It was the smallest and felt more coherent than some of the others.
She also had an exhibit of work by Rick Garland who won the top prize - plus an awful lot of sold work.
I reckon Miranda aced it - despite (or maybe because) she had the smallest number of works in her exhibition. I had a strong sense of a discriminating as well as a discerning eye!
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| Well hung wall of artwork chosen by Miranda Richardson |
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| Five paintings or urban landscapes by Rick Garland |
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| This gallery of small works selected by Miranda Richardson includes paintings by Felicity House and Ilaria Rosselli del Turco |
Critic - Nicola Coleby (105 artworks)
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| Part of the exhibition of a VERY LARGE number of artworks selected by Nicole Coleby |
This was by far the largest exhibition- it's more than twice the size of Miranda Richardson's and it did feel a little bit crowded - as if the final edit was something that never quite happened.
It used up the whole of the end of the Main Gallery and was coming quite a long way up the gallery as well. It made me wonder if this exhibition needs a "selected but not hung" or clearer guidance to the curators as to what's an ideal range in terms of numbers eg more than x and no more than y.
That said it's evident that a number of the works were "late entries" by invited artists since the works do NOT appear in the catalogue and the works are labelled properly on the wall ONLY.
Which makes me think this exhibition must actually be a LOT MORE than 105 artworks as it had a lot of "labelled on the wall only" pieces.
Definitely an exhibition in need of a curatorial edit!
The other thing that was odd was that a former ING Purchase Prize winner (Susan Angharad Williams 2007) had a work selected for this exhibition - and yet it was hanging very low on the wall....
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| Flower Heads, Fabric, Stones and a Fragment from Bosch 1/101 by Susan Angharad Williams 19 x 7", oil on linen £3,900 |
Critic - Simon Tait
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| View of part of Simon Tait's exhibition |
Maybe it's because Simon Tait is a critic that he's chosen to include rather a lot of invited artists - and this exhibition felt some way adrift of the ratio of "invited artists" to "selected via open entry" artists.
Isn't it odd that it's the two art critics who have deviated most from the 'norm' in terms of what makes for a successful ING exhibition?
That said I did like a lot of the work by the people he'd invited to exhibit.
The artists I have asked are all painters, but they include one of the finest painters of miniatures in the country, an inventive portraitist, a lino-cutter whose achievements defy analysis, a landscape painter with the power to shock, another whose grasp of texture is uncanny, a figurative painter who found a new path after a life change and a pop artist who has done the impossible to move the genre on.I particularly liked these five linocut prints of trees by Andrew Carter who works in East Dulwich and at the Artichoke Print Studio Brixton, London. I may just have to go and revisit them....
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| Linocut prints by Andrew Carter £350 each |
If there's one thing that didn't work in this exhibition - it was the placement and spacing of the 3D works.
More about the ING Discerning Eye
The Discerning Eye website maintains an archive of:
The following are all posts on Making A Mark over the last 10 years.
2017
2016
2015
- ING Discerning Eye 2015 - Call for Entries
- ING Discerning Eye 2015 - Selected Artists
- Prizewinners - ING Discerning Eye 2015
- Review ING Discerning Eye 2015
2013
- Jeremy Gardiner wins ING Discerning Eye Prize 2013
- ING Discerning Eye Exhibition 2013 - a review18 Nov 2013
- ING Discerning Eye 2012 - Selected Artists 01 Oct 2012
- Owen Bullet wins £5000 ING Discerning Eye Prize 21 Nov 2012
- ING Discerning Eye 2011 - Selected Artists 12 Sep 2011
- ING Discerning Eye - selected artists archive published 11 Aug 2011
- ING Discerning Eye 2010 - selected artists 25 Sep 2010
- REVIEW: The ING Discerning Eye exhibition 18 Nov 2010
- Exhibition Review - ING Discerning Eye 2009 16 Nov 2009
- Who's been selected for the ING Discerning Eye 2008? 10 Sep 2008
- ING Discerning Eye 2008 - Prizewinners 15 Nov 2008
- ING Discerning Eye 2008 - a review 13 Nov 2008
- ING Discerning Eye at the Mall Galleries 24 Nov 2007
Great review, as usual.
ReplyDeleteMany Thanks