NordenBladet – Irish-Canadian artist, Ciara Phillips, is this year’s recipient of the world’s leading graphics prize, “Queen Sonja Print Award”. Queen Sonja presented the award to the winner in a small ceremony at the Royal Palace on October 7th 2020. Queen Sonja received Ciara Phillips in an audience at the Palace before presenting the award during a lunch.
Queen Sonja said: “I am very pleased that the Queen Sonja Print Award 2020 goes to an artist who is as dedicated to graphics art. Ciara Phillips’ formal and social research in the field of graphics is both bold and unconventional and yet striking and aesthetic”.
Queen Sonja continued: “A unanimous jury is impressed by the power of Ciara Phillips’ commitment to graphics as a medium, by the boldness of her formal and social research in art, and by the maturity and solidity of her view of art and production in general. Her belief in collaboration, as it manifests in her ongoing project “Workshop”, springs from a set of political and aesthetic issues that she develops and elevates through a joint participation process.”
A total of 44 artists from around the world were nominated for the award this year. Curators, museums and artists from around the world were behind the nominations, which show the breadth of contemporary graphics. Both traditional methods and new approaches with installations, assemblies and performance have been represented among the nominees.
Ciara Phillips receives 400.000 Norwegian Crowns, aproximalty 40.000 US dollars and a stay at the Gallery “Atelje Larsen” in Helsingborg in Sweden. The Queen Sonja Print Award is considered the world’s leading award in graphic art and is awarded every other year.
Ciara Phillips lives and works in Glasgow, Scotland, and is a graduate of the Glasgow School of Art and Queen’s University in Kingston, Canada. She has been represented at a number of exhibitions both in the UK and internationally. In Norway she has held exhibitions in Stavanger and Bergen. Her ongoing art project “Workshop”, which started in 2010, was nominated for a Turner Prize in 2014. In 2021, exhibitions await in Sligo, Edinburgh and Limerick.
Queen Sonja and the winner Ciara Phillips. Photo: Sven Gjeruldsen / The Royal Court.
Featured image: Sven Gj. Gjeruldsen, Det kongelige hof