COURTESY BALTIC CENTRE FOR CONTEMPORARY ART
The Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead, England, announced today that it has created a new prize for emerging artists. Given out every two years to four artists, the award provides each winner £25,000 (about $31,500) toward creating new work and a £5,000 ($6,300) artist fee. The winners will also be featured in a 13-week group exhibition at the museum.
The jury for the first prize will be four well-known artists: Monica Bonvicini, Mike Nelson, Pedro Cabrita Reis, and Lorna Simpson. Each juror will nominate one artist, and they will then record and publish an interview with their selected winner.
“Our ambition for this international Artists’ Award is to open up a significant new biennial platform for nurturing emerging global talent and to create discursive space for key issues for art, artists and audiences,” BALTIC’s director, Sarah Munro, said in a statement. “At the core of this project is not an award ceremony but a commitment to talent development and dialogue with our audiences at a local, national and international level.”