The Natural Eye Bursary 2021 - Call for Entries

The Society of Wildlife Artists has published its Call for Entries for The Natural Eye Bursary 2021 

The deadline for entries is 1st June 2021 - so plenty of time to prepare an application.

What is The Natural Eye Bursary?

The Society of Wildlife Artists (SWLA) offers this Bursary each year to artists aged 16 and over who are interested in portraying wildlife in art.

the selectors are looking for proposals that demonstrate a sense of enquiry into the natural world through original and thoughtful creativity that will result in a genuine artistic and personal response to the wildlife subject.

 

What is on offer?

The award has two components:

• Awards of up to £750 are available to artists submitting exceptional proposals that focus on wildlife as a main subject to:
  
• carry out independent projects, 
• develop research - involving artwork
• or training in art practices .
• Successful applicants also have the opportunity to 
• exhibit an example (or examples) of their bursary work during The Natural Eye exhibition held annually at the prestigious Mall Galleries in London’s West End
• have their report of their project published on the SWLA website.

In addition

• several past bursary winners have gone on to become active members of the SWLA 
• the bursary has helped with exhibition opportunities and professional relationships that continue into the future
• most award winners have continued to diversify in the arts, often citing their bursary project as a pivotal moment in their practice. 

I was immersed in nature for a month, observing wildlife every day and for the first time learning to identify those methods of field drawing that work for me

CHRISTOPHER WALLBANK Bursary Winner 2008 - Read his report 

Urban Black Kites of Delhi by Chris Wallbank (won 2008)

- a subsequent project - as exhibited 10 years later in the SWLA Annual Exhibition in 2018

Essentially, it's an opportunity to demonstrate your interests, the scope of your enquiry and the knowledge, skills, talent and innovation that you bring to bear on creating a focused piece of research and artwork.

Christopher Wallbank (bursary winner 2008) discovered his fascination for combining art with ecology during his project drawing the wildlife of two extremes, depth and altitude, in the Bay of Biscay and Picos de Europa mountain range. He has since gone on to collaborate with several field-based conservation projects, including the long-term monitoring of guillemots, the preservation of urban black kites and as an SWLA member on the Wallasea and Wadensea projects. 

Green Bridge Loomery by Chris Wallbank

What are selectors looking for?

Successful proposals will reflect the SWLA’s main ethos to generate appreciation and delight in the natural world through fine art.

The current context changes the bursary slightly this year:

• Both the Pandemic and the subsequent lockdown(s) has meant that many more artists have found inspiration in nature. 
• However they also been limited in how far they can travel - and many in the UK are still limited by how far they can move away from their local area.

Many of the society’s members and associates working under lockdown restrictions have demonstrated how successfully artistic enquiry can capture the awe and wonder found in nature without the need to travel to exotic corners of the world.

Consequently in 2021, the SWLA have very sensibly suggested that they are particularly interested in proposals that 

• either celebrate the wildlife found close to home
• and/or projects by artists who have, perhaps for the first time, discovered a new focus for their work by engaging more with the natural world. 

That does not exclude other proposals - but the focus enables a much clearer focus on wildlife near people's own homes than hitherto.

Previous Bursary Awards

Previous bursary work has included a wide range of different media including; 

• drawing, 
• sculpture, 
• painting, 
• online journals, 
• artist’s book-works and 
• installation.  

Successful bursary projects have focused on one (or more) aspects - see below

• many document their experience of wildlife first hand - by working from observation in the field. 
• artistic development through education and building practical skills e.g. Gareth Williams’ bursary award enabled him to join a print studio for a year and develop his observations of wildlife through print making.

I was able to learn this entirely new way of working, which gave my work a new visual language and, complimented my style

GARETH WILLIAMS, THE NATURAL EYE BURSARY WINNER 2007 - read about his project

• research resulting in remarkable portfolios of work on display at The Natural Eye Exhibition. 

You can read about the projects undertaken by previous award winners on the SWLA website.

The resultant 2008 exhibition gave me the opportunity to invite peers and contemporaries to see my installation at the gallery — a great space — which led to an invitation to exhibit the work at "The Animal Gaze: Contemporary Art & Animal/​Human Studies" — Whitechapel

HELEN J. BULLARD, THE NATURAL EYE BURSARY WINNER 2006, 2007 - read about her 2007 project and her 2006 project

 

How to apply for a Natural Eye Bursary Award

10 x £10,000 bursaries to artists to replace Turner Prize 2020

There will be no Turner Prize in 2020. Instead Tate Britain has announced that one-off bursaries of £10,000 to 10 artists.

These will be announced in about one month's time - in late June.

The change of thinking has also added an extra £60,000 to the prize pot. The bursaries have been made possible thanks to generous funding from a group of Tate’s supporters, including The Ampersand Foundation.

NO EXHIBITION AND NO TURNER PRIZE IN 2020
both are replaced by 10 bursaries X £10k

The Turner Bursaries: why the change?

The very obvious problem in terms of the preparation required for an exhibition is that people are NOT at work and NOT doing what they would normally do to enable the annual Turner Prize Exhibition to go ahead.

This is simply not achievable under current restrictions.

An alternative was sought - and the decision was made to provide financial support to a larger selection of artists through this period of profound disruption and uncertainty.

Alex Farquharson, Director of Tate Britain and chair of the Turner Prize jury, said:

“Gallery closures and social distancing measures are vitally important, but they are also causing huge disruption to the lives and livelihoods of artists. The practicalities of organising a Turner Prize exhibition are impossible in the current circumstances, so we have decided to help support even more artists during this exceptionally difficult time. I think JMW Turner, who once planned to leave his fortune to support artists in their hour of need, would approve of our decision. I appreciate visitors will be disappointed that there is no Turner Prize this year, but we can all look forward to it returning in 2021.”

One can only surmise after the split prize last year that this might be another example of "how we do things differently after the Pandemic" and that the Bursary idea might catch on.

It's a lot fairer than giving one artist a very large sum of money - and this move has also leveraged out more money to support artists i.e. there's an extra £60,000 in the prize pot!

• the normal prize post is £40,000
• this gets split between a First Prize of £25,000 and three x £5,000 for the three other shortlisted artists

Those eligible for the Turner Prize are artists born or based in the UK for outstanding exhibitions or other presentations of their work in the previous 12 months.

The change in the prize pot makes me wonder 

• how much it costs to put on the Turner Prize exhibition at Tate Britain and 
• whether the person who wins the Prize should be given the option of a very big cash prize or a much smaller cash prize and an exhibition at Tate Britain.

The Turner Jury

The members of the jury who will determine who gets the bursaries are: 

• Richard Birkett, Curator at Large at the Institute of Contemporary Arts; 
• Sarah Munro, Director of BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art; 
• Fatoş Üstek, Director of Liverpool Biennial; and 
• Duro Olowu, designer and curator.

The Tate says they've spent the last 12 months they've visited hundreds of exhibitions in preparation for selecting the nominees - but surely that should be 9 months if you disregard lockdown and their inability to visit any exhibitions

In line with the existing prize criteria, they are invited to nominate British artists based on their contribution to new developments in contemporary art at this time. 

The new plan is that they should hold a virtual meeting to select the list of 10 artists, which will be announced in late June.