The Kingston Prize 2013 is partnered with the Kingston School of Art  

The 2013 rules have been published at www.kingstonprize.ca and entry forms will be available by December 2012. The deadline for entries in the competition is April 26, 2013 and the initial exhibition will be held at the Firehall Theatre, Gananoque in October.

Outdoor exhibits showcase artwork from
National Gallery and Kingston Prize

Canada’s Capital Region ─ The National Capital Commission (NCC), in collaboration with the National Gallery of Canada and The Kingston Prize, today officially launched Art in the Courtyards in the heart of Canada’s Capital.

From now until the end of October 2012, visitors are invited to discover public art while exploring three heritage courtyards in Ottawa’s ByWard Market. Copies of various Canadian artworks are hung in a series of downtown courtyards, forming unique outdoor exhibits. Nature and portraits are this year’s themes.

Beaux-Arts and Tin House Courtyards
These courtyards near the National Gallery of Canada feature works by Canadian artist and
landscape photographer Lorraine Gilbert. Her art, depicting trees, landscapes and plant life, is a
great introduction to the National Gallery of Canada’s summer exhibition Flora and Fauna:
400 Years of Artists Inspired by Nature, which looks at the ways in which nature has been an enduring subject for artists over the centuries (until September 9, 2012).

Clarendon Lanes Courtyard
The Clarendon Lanes Courtyard, near George Street, features contemporary Canadian portraits by the four grand-prize winners of The Kingston Prize from 2005 to 2011. The Kingston Prize, Canada’s Portrait Competition, celebrates contemporary portraits of Canadians by Canadian artists and takes place every two years. The featured artists are:

Michael Bayne, 2011 winner, Kingston, Ontario
Andrew Valko, 2009 winner, Winnipeg, Manitoba
Joshua Choi, 2007 winner, Toronto, Ontario
Marcia Perkins, 2005 winner, Victoria, British Columbia

-30-

Article written by Kim Davidson for CanadaArtsConnect

As I entered the exhibit room at the Royal Ontario Museum I was overcome with a heavy sense of serenity and calm that usually suggests being inside of a museum. Maybe it is due to the epic proportions of the square footage of the room mixed with the induced and encouraged silence. Upon entering The Kingston Prize exhibit room I found an example of this notion as a man was slumped in one of the provided black leather club chairs having what appeared to be a cozy little nap. Little did he know he would soon be awakened by the scampering of small children in educational groups running through the exhibit from one door to the next exclaiming candid and hilarious things like, “This is art, we aren’t here for art!” and “Ew, look, she’s naked in that picture.”

Brief disturbances aside, the room was empty for the most part. The dark grey walls, covered in famous related quotations, is the temporary home to the thirty works of art from The Kingston Prize finalists themselves. The Kingston Prize is a national portrait competition for contemporary portraits of Canadians illustrated by Canadians. The competition started in Gananoque, Ontario, in 2005 with only 150 entries. The mission statement for the competition is as follows, “To encourage and reward the creation of contemporary portraits by Canadian artists, through a biennial national competition for paintings and drawings. The monetary prize provides encouragement for artists to develop new approaches to portraiture.”

And ‘new approaches’ is definitely correct. To my surprise (and relief) not every portrait in the collection was oil on canvas. Not every portrait was framed. Some portraits were comprised of six mini portraits. The sizes of the works of art ranged from one portrait taking up almost an entire wall, floor to ceiling, and the smallest being roughly the size of a small pack of cigarettes. Some portraits, like Portrait of James by Janine Hall and Aladdin by Richard Thomas Davis were very realistic and could be mistaken for prints of photographs. It was not until I walked within an inch of my nose touching the painting itself that I realized that it was, in fact, a painting.

The winner of this year’s Kingston Prize, receiving $20 000, was Kingston’s very own Michael Bayne with his extremely realistic oil on wood piece called Orange Grandma. Bayne was able to recreate every line, shadow and shade of colour to a tee in his portrait, making the relatively small image resemble that of an actual photo. His caption for the photo reads as follows:

Stylistically, I have no desire to glorify or idealize my chosen subjects. While historically the portrait may have attempted to heroicize the sitter, I favour the frankness of style more common to the passport or driver’s licence photograph. Snapshot-like in its lack of ornamentation and poetry, its formulation has a certain minimal, studied beauty. Theoretically, I think this raises questions like, what does it mean when the end product of a labour-intensive craft has the look of a mass-produced object?

As I walked around the exhibit room, reading each photo caption and examining each piece of art–both with my eyes and my Nikon D5000 lens–one question kept popping into my head: Why did the artist choose to portray this Canadian, Orange Grandma? Initially I thought The Kingston Prize focus was solely on the Canadian portrayed in the portrait. After reading the captions of each image it occurred to me that the importance of this contest is solely based on the creative and artistic talents of the artists themselves. These human beings that will be forever immortalized as a piece of art submitted to The Kingston Prize are not famous Canadians; they are mothers, brothers, fathers, daughters, wives, grandmothers, husbands and sons. They are everyday people just like you and me. Having this little “epiphany” made me realize one important thing about The Kingston Prize exhibit: some of the most interesting and influential pieces of art can be interpreted and influenced by the little things in our everyday lives. Onlookers tend to be captivated and intrigued by pieces that hit close to home more than anything else, and The Kingston Prize is a prime example of this.

Thursday, December 15, 2011

NEWS RELEASE FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: 

(Toronto, Ontario – Thursday, December 15, 2011)
The Institute for Contemporary Culture (ICC) at the ROM and the Kingston Arts Council are pleased
to announce William Lazos (Toronto) as the winner of The 2011 Kingston Prize People’s Choice Award at the Toronto exhibition. Thanks to the generous support of Borden Ladner Gervais, this year’s People’s Choice Award is valued at $1,000 and is based on votes cast by visitors to the exhibition since its opening on November 10, 2011.

The biannual Kingston Prize is Canada’s only portrait competition, featuring contemporary paintings and drawings of Canadians by Canadian artists. An exhibition of the 30 finalists for this year is on view at the ROM until January 29, 2011.

“We are very pleased with the high quality and depth of this year’s submissions, and very grateful to the ROM for putting together such a captivating exhibition. This show demonstrates how compelling good portraiture can be,” says Julian Brown, Co-Founder of the Kingston Prize. On behalf of the Prize and Jury, we wish all the best to the talented artists who submitted their work.” 

The winner of this year’s Kingston Prize as awarded by the jury is Mike Bayne (Kingston, Ontario). Honourable Mentions were awarded to Steven Spazuk (Ville de Léry, Québec) and Tammy Salzl (Montreal, Quebec). Thanks to the generous support of the W. Garfield Weston Foundation of Toronto, the value of this year’s Kingston Prize has been doubled to $20,000, and Honourable Mention Awards have been doubled to $2,000 each.

The Kingston Prize is a juried competition whereby one grand prize winner and two honourable mention awards are selected from 30 finalists. This year’s jury members were Marina Cutler, gallery owner and curator, Montreal; Robert Enright, art critic, Winnipeg and Guelph; Natalka Husar, artist, Toronto.

2011 Finalists
Pamela Augustino
Daniel Barkley
Michael Bayne
Jeremiah Birnbaum
Brian Boulton
Richard Davis
Christiano De Araujo
Marina Dieul
Francis Fontaine
Sadko Hadzihasanovic
Janine Hall
Roselina Hung
Soraya Hutchinson
Charles Keillor
Gerald Kuehl
William Lazos
Tony Luciani
Eileen MacArthur
Edmund Prior
Steven Rosati
Tammy Salzl
Chantel-Andree Samson
Panagiotis Peter Sarganis
Ewa Scheer
Matthew Schofield
Jay Senetchko
Steven Spazuk
Anna Syperek
Ted Tucker
Sean Yelland

-30-