I must admit to being slack about this; I was not actually aware that there was a Northern Art Prize, nor that it was in Leeds, or that the winner would be announced this month. So finding out about it was quite a shock – but not as much of a shock as seeing the shortlist, because for a prize based around the idea of art in the North, three out of five artists on the list are based in London.
I’m not saying that London is a bad place to live. And I’m not saying that artists from London shouldn’t be able to work in the North. But if you are going to have a prize that rewards artists for taking part in a “cultural renaissance [that] is transforming attitudes and confounding old stereotypes” happening all over the North, and then stock the shortlist with artists based in the South… you come pretty close to making the prize a mockery of the ideas it sets out to encourage.
Whoever wins this prize will get an award of £16,500, in order to recognise the contribution that artist has made towards art in the North. I really hope that the money goes towards an artist who does actually live and work in the North – you can vote on the website for which artist you think should get the dosh. The winner gets announced on the 17th of January.
Frankly, I think it’s time we stopped judging contemporary art on which area of the country it was made in. It’s either good quality art or it’s not – and it seems that the government agrees with me, as a new report states that ‘excellence’ rather than ‘bums on seats’ is to be the new yardstick to measure arts funding by. This won’t make a difference to the Northern Arts Prize, but perhaps it will go some way towards making regional prizes as irrelevant as Watercolour Challenge.
