The $50,000 awarded to a Canadian artist under 40 years old who has had a show in a public or commerical art gallery within 18 months of being nominated. The award was announced last night (Tuesday) at the Montreal Museum of Fine Art. Unfortunately, the exhibition will not travel this year, but the good news is that the event will now be an annual one.

The nominees were:
West coast – Steven Shearer
Praries/North – Annie Pootoogook
Ontario – Janice Kerbel
Quebec – BGL
Atlantic – Matthew Reichertz

Two installations of note:

Steven Shearer’s installation was made up of portraits of stoner rockers, lists of song titles and lyrics and an odd collages of photographs of garden sheds.

BGL, an artist collective comprising Jasmin Bilodeau, Sebastien Giguere and Nicolas Laverdiere presented an installation, the first part of which involved an environment of piled up boxes and detritus, vaguely reminiscent of Mike Nelson, a British artist shortlisted for the Turner Prize in 2001.

More on Mike Nelson HERE

But a surprise was to be found in an adjacent room. The door said “poussez”. Looking through a window you could see a long wooden raised platform of sorts, at either end of which were two strategically place pillows. On the platform was a disco ball. Attached to both the disco ball and the door were ropes arranged in a pulley situation so that when you opened the door, the disco ball would go rolling from one end of the platform to the other, hitting the pillow and causing a galaxy of sparkles over the walls and ceiling.

But the winner was ANNIE POOTOOGOOK, the artist from Cape Dorset, Baffin Island.

Annie Pootoogook. Image: Power Plant

She cried as she received the award. A politically correct decision? Undoubtedly. But her work stands up. She’s almost an outsider artist, which makes her drawings resonate.

Annie Pootoogook, Domestic Scene. Image: Drawing Society

A Montreal review, a preview of the Toronto art fairs and a look at recent painting is all coming up on VoCA this week…