Two hundred works from the 2,535 open-submission entries to the Royal Ulster Academy’s (RUA) Annual Exhibition were selected for showing this year.
Two hundred works from the 2,535 open-submission entries to the Royal Ulster Academy’s (RUA) Annual Exhibition were selected for showing this year. Prizes were up 50 per cent to 18, with the top three awards selected by the guest adjudicator, stand-up comedian and ex-art-college student Phill Jupitus. The Niavac Prize was won by Mark Shields for a large collage on canvas, Pallaksch, Pallaksch; the Tom Caldwell Prize was awarded to Ian Cumberland for a striking genre portrait, Juxtaposed; and Grainne Watts took the Hamilton Architects Sculpture Prize for her ceramic piece, Oval Wall Form.
In some style, Daniel Nelis won both the Ross’s Portrait Award and the Bradbury Art Drawing Prize for the admirable chalk-on-black-paper Study of a Girl in Late Spring. The KPMG Young Artist Award was won by Saoirse Condon for her ceramic, Vienn Vessel.
In printmaking, Yoko Akino produced a variation on an earlier classic Japanese print with the etching and aquatint There Is No Before or After This, which took the WG Baird Prize; the Watercolour Society Award went to Ann Quinn; the ArtisAnn Gallery Award to Sean McGibbon; and the Russell Society Award to Rosie McGurran.
Other prizes included the Irish News Award, given to Lynn Kennedy for her oil painting Milkshake; the Errigle Inn Photography Award went to Kevin Sharkey for an excellent archival print; a clay sculpture by Christy Keeney, which was reminiscent of early Tom Bevan, gained him the Holly Gallery Award. The Sunflower Bar Prize went to an acrylic by Andrew Gault, while the Digital Arts Studio Award went to a small sculptural construction by Stuart Marshall.
Interesting material not on the awards list are: Anushiya Sundaralingam’s powerful meditations on the Sri Lankan war; and Brian Kielt and Comhghall Casey’s eyecatching portraits. Clement McAleer, Catherine McWilliams and James McCreary, each in their different media, showed that landscape painting/printing is neither dead nor cliché; while in sculpture, Bob Sloan, Graham Gingles, James Horan, Anthony Scott and Jason Ellis gave us highly professional work. Not a bad year.
Brian McAvera
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