Threadneedle Prize 2012 - the Award Winners

Threadneedle Prize Winner 2012
Ben Greener - "My Feet"

Last night I was at the Mall Galleries for the Awards Dinner for the 5th Annual Threadneedle Prize 2012. There are two main prizes - the Annual Threadneedle Prize (£30,000) and the Visitor's Choice Award (£10,000) and I guessed right and predicted one of them!  The Prize was this year won by a man for the very first time.

I managed to get myself and my camera there, unfortunately the battery decided to stay at home in the charger.  However I did help to choreograph a great photograph of the winner if I say so myself!

The tale of this prize is about two sculptors, two men named Ben and two men who took themselves at the starting point and the subject matter for their entry to this competition. Many thanks to Liberty for the photos of the chaps who won prizes.

First the winners and then the commentary.

Threadneedle Prize

Threadneedle Prize Winner 2012
My Feet by Ben Greener 
Wood, Canvas, Glue, Tea & Coffee, 10x24x34,
£1500

The winner of the Threadneedle Prize 2012 is Ben Greener.  It's an incredibly innovative piece.

People's Choice Award Winner

This is the one I predicted correctly - Robert Truscott won the People's Choice Award with Defeat.

Defeat by Robert Truscott
Mixed Media, Plaster, Epoxy Putty, Material on Armature, 367x167x49cm,
£30,000

The sculpture is of soldiers after the Battle of Stalingrad leaving the city as prisoners of war en route to the Soviet gulag.  This battle was one of the bloodiest of the second world war and two million people died.  There a major story about the aftermath as well of the battle itself.  Here's what  Wikipedia had to say on the subject

Out of the nearly 110,000 German prisoners captured in Stalingrad, only about 6,000 ever returned. Already weakened by disease, starvation and lack of medical care during the encirclement, they were sent on death marches (75,000 survivors died within 3 months of capture) to prisoner camps and later to labour camps all over the Soviet Union. Some 35,000 were eventually sent on transports, of which 17,000 did not survive. Most died of wounds, disease (particularly typhus), cold, overwork, mistreatment, and malnutrition.

Robert Truscott and some of the figures in Defeat

On accepting the prize Robert said he would use the money to get the sculpture cast in bronze.  Robert talks about the materials and processes he uses in  blog post - Construction and Materials

Islington Backgardens in Winter Sunlight 

by Melissa Scott Miller

Two runners-up won £500 each.  These were:

• Dreaming 2 by David Firmstone (one of the shortlisted artists see Threadneedle Prize 2012 - Shortlisted Artists)
• Islington Backgardens in Winter Sunlight by Melissa Scott Miller

Commentary

Ben Greener is an excellent example of an artist who is very focused and makes things happen - besides creating sculptures.  Ben has known he's an artist from a very early age and has spent much of his life making art.  He started a degree course and then, having started, realised he needed to just get on and make art.

He decided a while back that the Threadneedle Prize was the sort of prize which could provide him with the capital to allow him to get a practice going in a studio.  His original intention had been to provide a complete sculpture of his body - inside out.  Which is how he came to construct his skull and spine and hands.  However there were problems getting the whole structure to hang together and hence he decided to submit just his feet to the Threadneedle.

The judges apparently were of one mind as soon as they saw his work and knew that it was exceptional - this I heard from one of the judges telling Ben last night!

Ben Hendy and his life size
Self Portrait
linocut (sold)

Then, as soon I posted my selected artists posts, Ben was emailing me with photos of his work to go on the blog post.

Keep an eye on his website http://www.bengreener.com/ which is cuurrently under construction.  When finished it's bound to have interesting and innovative work from somebody who is definitely 'going places'.

The other Ben and another life size self-portrait

I was also very pleased to meet up with Ben Hendy last night and managed to persuade him to stand in front of his artwork - a linocut of his naked body - so you can get the sense of scale.

Ben was shortlisted for the Threadneedle Prize and last night won a prize of £1,000.

Ben told me that he'd handburnished the whole linocut - which for me makes it all the more remarkable.

What is most astonishing is that we have two young men - both called Ben and at the beginning of their career as an artist - who both chose to use themselves as their subject matter for their competition submission.

Both did something truly innovative - and both were duly recognised and became rather better off as a result.

Note: John Deston is to be congratulated for organising the best dinner I've ever had at an Events/Awards "Do".  It was absolutely delicious.

More about the Threadneedle Prize

For more about the Threadneedle Prize 2012 - and the Prize in earlier years - see my earlier posts (and images) below

2012 Threadneedle Prize

• Call for Entries for £30000 Threadneedle Prize 2012 03 Mar 2012
• Threadneedle Prize 2012: Analysis of entries / selected artists 14 Jun 2012
• Threadneedle Prize 2012: names of selected artists 21 Aug 2012 - this includes links to the websites of selected artists
• Threadneedle Prize 2012 - Exhibition now Online
• Threadneedle Prize 2012 - Shortlisted Artists
• Review: Threadneedle Prize Exhibition 2012
• Threadneedle Prize 2012: The Making a Mark Select Six

2011 Threadneedle Prize 

• Threadneedle Prize 2011 - a new selection process 26 Apr 2011
• Shortlist for Threadneedle Prize 2011 dominated ...08 Sep 2011
• Threadneedle Prize: The Making a Mark Select ...26 Sep 2011
• Review: Threadneedle Prize Exhibition 2011 22 Sep 2011
• Henriette Simson wins Threadneedle Prize 2011 06 Oct 2011

Other information about art competitions in the UK: Art Competitions in the UK - this includes links to earlier years of the Threadneedle Prize

Exhibition

• Threadneedle Prize | Mall Galleries, 17 Carlton House Terrace, London SW1Y 5BD Tel: 44 (0) 20 7930 6844 threadneedleprize@mallgalleries.com
• Directions to Mall Galleries
• Mall Galleries | The Mall, London SW1 | Tel: 020 7930 6844 |info@mallgalleries.com

Review: Cotman in Normandy - at Dulwich Picture Gallery

Yesterday I went to see Cotman in Normandy - the new exhibition of watercolour paintings, drawings and etchings by John Sell Cotman at Dulwich Picture Gallery.  The exhibition opens to the public today and continues until mid-January.

Cotman in Normandy - the coloured watercolour paintings done in the studio on his return

In summary, it an exhibition which is going to be of interest to those who like Early English watercolours and drawings.  However it has to be said that the bulk of the exhibition - apart from the first and last rooms are mainly drawings and etchings and mainly monochromatic paintings.  Those coming hoping to see a lot of watercolour paintings will be disappointed - however the ones you do see are good - although not all are by Cotman!

Who is John Cotman?

I sometimes forget that not everybody shares my enthusiasm for English Watercolour Painters around 1800!  So here's a bit about Cotman

John Sell Cotman (1782-1842) was a leading member of the Norwich school of Artists - which was the first provincial art movement in the UK.  (Note:  I learned that the Museum in Norwich has a huge bequest of Cotman works - with the stipulation that they should never ever be loaned out.  So if you want to see good early works by Cotman you need to pay a visit to Norwich Museum.  Not that one can tell this by looking at their website - the most I could find was a booklist for the Norwich School of Painters!).

Prior to that he had been born in Norwich and educated in painting in London where he was very much influenced by Thomas Girtin and joined a sketching club founded by Girtin.

He's mainly known as a landscape painter and etcher plus he produced illustrations for books.  At the time of the paintings produced for this exhibition he was being paid some £200pa to be a painting tutor to the wife and children of a gentleman known as Dawson Turner.

Other artists in the exhibition

Besides Cotman, there are also a few examples of drawings and paintings of Normandy which were being executed by other watercolour artists at the same time - including:

• JMW Turner - the exhibition includes three very nice small watercolour sketches - including one which was a direct comparison with a painting by Cotman  
• Richard Parkes Bonington (who died age 26) - whose drawings I loved and 
• a couple of artists I'd never heard of:
• Samuel Prout who was a master watercolour painter and Painter in Water-Colours in Ordinary to King George IV in 1829 and afterwards to Queen Victoria.
• Henry Edridge - who made two excursions to Normandy and Paris, in 1817 and 1819

Cotman in Normandy

It's an interesting exhibition and focuses on one particular stage in Cotman's life when he had two ambitions:

• to resolve some questions about the origins of English architecture - and its relationship with French Norman architecture.  Apparently architecture was described as going from Anglo Saxon to Early English without any reference to the Norman influence!  Cotman had painted most of the churches in Norfolk - and he had a theory!
• to make money (what's new!) by creating portfolios of etchings from a series of drawings of buildings in Normandy.

The context for both of these aims is the fact the Napoleonic wars (1803-1815) were over and the English could again travel in France.  However  I gather that the British public did not find a great need for drawings of buildings in Normandy and hence in the end he didn't achieve the favour or fortune that he'd hoped for.

New Bridge, Durham 1806-7 by John Sell Cotman
Watercolour on paper
Private Collection

Exhibition Rooms

The exhibition starts with drawings, etchings and watercolours of England by Cotman from around the time the Norwich School of Artists was founded in 1803 - within the context of the "golden age of English watercolour painting"

(See The 
Golden 
Age 
of
 British
Watercolor 
in 
the
 18th 
and 
19th 
Centuries
 By
 Dr. Patricia
 Crown)

If I'm honest these are the ones I prefer.  I'm a big fan of Cotman's early paintings in the first decade of the nineteenth century.

The New Bridge, Durham (left) is a junior relation of the very famous Greta Bridge which is in the British Museum

The hub of the exhibition revolves around three journeys that Cotman made to Normandy in 1817, 1818 and 1820.  The artwork he produced is referred to as "later work" to distinguish it from some of the very popular earlier work.

This is a YouTube video of the Curator explaining the exhibition



I found the curator and the catalogue to be rather heavy on the history and the story and somewhat lightweight on the painting and technical aspects of producing the works.  It's very often the case these days that exhibitions of paintings focus in part on the processes adopted by an artist - but here we have no sketchbooks and no tools of the trade of the time which help explain how his work was produced.

It would be good if galleries could balance out art historians with the valuable perspective of practitioners who can talk and write rather more know about how works were produced and their resonance as works of art as opposed to records of places.   As it is, it's rather as if the exhibition is designed to appeal rather more to antiquarians than artists or art lovers!

So for example, I went through the whole introduction at the preview by the Curator yesterday without once realising that not one single drawing or painting in the exhibition was produced by Cotman 'on site' while working 'plein air'.  I also only found that out when I asked where his sketchbooks were.  Apparently there are no sketchbooks or any original drawings.  All the works in existence are studio works made from the original drawings.  Which explains why a lot of his works appear to have been made while he was suspended in the air!

Given the contrast with the practice of other artists working at the same time I'd have thought rather more weight could have been made of this and the processes adopted by Cotman for making art.

Cornelius Varley's 

Patent Graphic Telescope

patented 1811

For example, one of the summaries on the wall references  a Graphic Telescope - which was used to project an image from which the outline could be drawn on to a piece of paper - but that's it.  I had  no picture or further explanation of what it looks like or what it did.  However if we go to the V&A we can see a whole article about Drawing techniques using the camera lucida & Varley graphic telescope

To my mind the use of such a tool explains why Cotman's 'style' for his later works looks even flatter than his earlier works where more use was made of tonal values and gradated washes.

In the later works he gets more involved with the detail  and the a heavy punch of a 3D effect rather than the big shapes and judicious and subtle use of tonal values to get recession which is seen in the earlier works.  There's also a certain sense of colouring between the lines in these later works.  That said it's one way of doing watercolour!

In essence for me, this exhibition confirms John Sell Cotman's strengths as being a graphic rather than a romantic artist - such as Bonington.  The contrast between their drawing styles  which is evident in the exhibition is very marked.  Maybe his aim of producing a set of etchings led him to be much more graphic - it's hard to say.

Cotman is good at composition and the graphic representation of a place.  This exhibition suggests that in his later works he's rather less interested in the colouration and the tonal washes with careful colouration which are more evident his earlier work.

Alencon (1823) by John Sell Cotman
watercolour, 432 x 584 mm, 
Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery

However he does produce an excellent monochromatic watercolour drawing - and there are some excellent paintings - just not a lot!

[Note:  If you want to see more images from the exhibition please bookmark this post as I'll be back to add in some more images from the exhibition later - I've got to go to an Awards Dinner!]

...and the rest

Catalogue

There's a catalogue if you can't get to the exhibition - but although the quality of its reproductions are good, those interested need to realise it's heavy on the history rather than the art.  The catalogue and various other products are available from the excellent gallery shop.

Events

There are some related events

• Curator's Lecture
• Exploring Cotman's Normandy: Study Day
• Late Night Opening

Accessibility

I love the look of the exhibition - the sepia ink and monochomatic works on old paper works look particularly good on the Farrow and Ball Dix Blue walls.

However I do think the labelling is going to present some people with problems if they have less than very good eyesight.  The issue is essentially the lack of contrast between the white text and the mid blue label.

I suggest Dulwich PG might want to reflect on the right balance between accessibility and aesthetics for future exhibitions.

The Facebook Guide to Facebook Pages

A lot of artists are beginning to realise they need to use a Facebook Page for marketing their art and associated activities, rather than their Personal Accounts, when communicating with their collectors and other parties interested in their art.

I wrote a blog post a little while ago about the difference between personal accounts on facebook and Facebook pages - see Artists on Facebook - The Scope and The Rules.

However, when I wrote it, I hadn't yet come across the OFFICIAL Facebook Guide to Facebook Pages.  It's a pdf file which means that you can download this and keep it a reference document.

Page 3 of the Facebook Guide to Facebook Pages
you can download this to read offline

This guides you through all the different components of a Facebook Page in terms of:

• its design, the apps and how the feature page works
• the scope to create feature items eg 
• by pinning a story (eg an exhibition announcement if you;re an artist) to the top of the page
• by hiding or deleting stories
• defining milestones eg you opened an online gallery!
• identifying who your friends are - apparently I have a lot who are aged 45-64 and a very significant percentage of you live in the USA!
• identifying how well your Page is working through Insights - and explains all the different aspects of this.  I find the response to different posts on the timeline to be very instructive in terms of what people like to read and click on
• showing you what the activity log is and how it works
• providing you with the details of how big the photos need to be for your cover photo
  (851 x 315 pixels)  and profile pic (180 x 180 pixels)

ESSENTIAL! Best of all it has:

• a checklist of what you need to do to get started with a Facebook Page
• a statement of what you must NOT do when creating a cover photo
• a set of tips for how to get the best out of your Facebook Page

For example - did you know this one?

Publish visually engaging Page posts.
While a diverse set of post types is important, posts including a photo album or picture can generate 2X more engagement than other post types

So here's the two key websites for you

• For the guide go to: http://ads.ak.facebook.com/ads/FacebookAds/Pages_Product_Guide_022812.pdf
• For more information, go to: http://www.facebook.com/about/pages

Do let me know what you think of it and do please share what you changed after reading it.

7th October 2012 (+1) - Who's made a mark this week?

The problem with being inquisitive is that you can get awfully distracted by information you come across - and so it was yesterday which is why this is a day late!  That and a website which developed a corrupted page this week which has led to endless correspondence.....

Panoramic View from the top of the hill in Greenwich Park, London
- complete with Equestrian Arena for the Olympics 2012
pen and ink and coloured pencils,
11" x 48" (3 double page spreads in Moleskine Sketchboook)
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

The sketch at the top for those of you who haven't seen it before is my enormous 48" wide sketch of the Greenwich Park Panorama as seen from the Royal Park at Greenwich Park - sat right on top of the Prime Meridian - and looking across the Equestrian Arena which was still up when we Urban Sketchers London sketched there last month.

You can also see the double page spread sketches which went into the creation of this panorama on my Travels with a Sketchbook blog.  These contain links to the images on Flickr which are all annotated with notes for each building so you can see what you're looking at!

• Sailing ships and the City of London from Greenwich Park
• Greenwich Heritage, Canary Wharf and the O2 Dome

Art Blogs and Artists

Botanical Art

• It's very odd doing a review at a distance but this is my review of the American Society of Botanical Artists - 15th Annual Exhibition - which includes links to pictures of the exhibition, the artwork and artists' websites
• Congrats to Heeyoung Kim - who I met in London in April - who won the top prize.  She also has a very new blog about botanical art - Heeyoung Kim Botanical Art 
• This is an unusual post - would anybody like £4,950? Botanical Painting Diploma Course - 2013 Scholarship
• Rosie Sanders (Rosie Sanders - blog) - who specialises in enormous botanical art - has been visiting Provence - and writing about the Wild Flowers of Provence  and Provence Onions.
• Dianne Sutherland asks a question with a spin familiar to botanical artists - What to paint
• Some fantastic photographs of leaves on the National Geographic website 

Coloured Pencils and Pastels

• There's an article about the 2008 Threadneedle Prizewinner Patricia Cain's pastel drawings of construction sites and buildings in the October 2012 issue of Pastel Journal.
• The UKCPS Annual Exhibition 2012 opened in Nuneaton on Saturday.  However unlike previous years there are no images on the website or blog so I guess we have to wait and see.......

Drawing and Sketching

Reverse Glass Painting

Following on from yesterday's post, Verre Églomisé - an introduction - I've learned a lot about reverse glass painting - including that:

• it is also known as Hinterglas painting if the heritage which informs it is Middle European and Germanic
• it's a form of painting used in both China and India
• a tradition also developed within North America as immigrants brought their folk art with them

I've also been very impressed by some of the artwork I've seen - although there's also a fair amount of 'folk art' which is rather less sophisticated.  As always, the impact of this technique very much depends on the skill of the artist

See, for example, this painting by Jan van der Heyden which is in the Rijksmuseum Collection

View in the woods by Jan van der Heyden [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Date between 1660 and 1690

Medium Verre églomisé, Dimensions 34 × 42.5 cm (13.4 × 16.7 in)

For those who would also like to learn more about this art, I've rounded up all the authoritative links to online information about this approach to making art which I could find on the Internet and created a new website.  

See Verre Églomisé - Reverse Glass Painting for links to more information about:

• the history of reverse glass painting
• techniques for producing reverse glass paintings
• artists who produce reverse glass paintings

Obviously it's still at an early stage of development and I'd love to hear about any more useful links which are not yet included and/or any artists who specialise in this field.