Untitled by Richard Lewer, Winner of 2015 Albany Art Prize (Photo credit: Indra Geidans)
The City of Albany is a prime regional centre located 450 km south of Perth and with the support from the Jack Family Charitable Trust will enter its 9th year of offering the lucrative Albany Art Prize, this year. It’s a $25,000 acquisitive prize with a studio residency at the beautiful heritage-listed building of the Vancouver Art Centre.
Indra Geidans, Visual Arts Officer at the centre said in addition to the prize, the winning artist ​will receive a month-long residency, including $2500 to cover the travel to Albany.
Geidans believes that the benefit of operating out of a regional centre is the smaller size of the local community, which is a good bonus for the community, as well as for the artist.
‘For the artist to be attending a residency here, they very easily fit into the community space: sometimes artists stay for one week, sometimes they stay for the full month.
‘The Prize gives the local community the opportunity to view artworks of a national contemporary standard, which normally wouldn’t be available to them.’
The month-long residency is available after the winner has been announced and allows the artist to visit, stay and work in Albany for that period.
‘We don’t put any stipulations for the artist, and it’s their wish how they want to use the residency.
‘We do ask the artists whether they would be happy to deliver an artist’s talk and most artists are very happy to do that, and so the community gets an opportunity to see their work as a presentation by the artist,’ Geidans added.
The national prize also has a second and third category of a highly commended and people’s choice prize, the award for which is $2,500 each. The painting prize has no restrictions on theme, but the size of the artwork should not be more than 1.5m x 1m.
Artists are requested to submit applications online and the prize opens on the 1st of March 2016. More information about the prize will be available shortly on the Albany Art Prize website.
