Aesthetica Art Prize: One Week Left To Submit Your Entries

Not long to go now…

The 2012 Aesthetica Art Prize is drawing to close, with only one week to go to get your entries in!

Over the past five years, Aesthetica has consistently supported and championed artists working in all mediums.  Artistsmay submit their work into any one of the four categories; Photographic & Digital Art, Three Dimensional Design & Sculpture, Painting & Drawing, Video, Installation & Performance.

Here’s a selection of works from the 2011 Aesthetica Art Prize to give you some final inspiration. This selection was taken from the Aesthetica Creative Works Annual 2012, available to purchase here.

coming-race

Nothing Like Something Happens Anywhere, Chapter, Cardiff

Incoporating the works by artists: Francis Alys, Stan Denniston, Andy Holden, Ben Rivers, Ugo Rondinon, Maaike Schoorel and George Shaw, Nothing Like Something Happens Anywhere takes its title from a line in Philip Larkin’s I Remember I Remember, exploring the meaningfulness of events in our lives, as opposed to the unadorned fact of living.

Investigating the nearly imperceptible evolutions in everyday existence or the ‘slow history’ that lies beneath the surface of culture, the works delve beneath the rapid succession of events on a human scale, to find the slower currents typical of the history of people, relating to their environment, relationships and the structures that shape societies. The history described by Fernand Braudel as an ‘anonymous history, working in the depths and most often in silence’.

Stonehenge

Sacrilege by Turner Prize-winning artist Jeremy Deller

Stonehenge goes on tour – Sacrilege by Turner Prize-winning artist Jeremy Deller comes to Whitstable Biennale as part of 2012 celebrations

With London 2012 Paralympic Games starting next week, Sacrilege, the life-sized inflatable replica of Stonehenge, starts 5th September as part of a tour that will see it travel to over 30 locations across the UK.

Kolobrzeg

Rineke Dijkstra: A Retrospective, Guggenheim Museum, New York

The inverted cupcake, the washing machine, the hot-cross bun…these are just three nicknames that the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum acquired in the years that followed its unveiling. Yet New York Times writer John Canaday’s quip is perhaps the most memorable for its biting cynicism – “The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum is a war between architecture and painting in which both come out badly maimed”. Fifty-three years on controversy still dogs Frank Lloyd Wright’s iconic design with many still contesting that the architecture of the building ultimately overwhelms the art contained within. With this in mind it was an astute decision to showcase the Dutch born artist Rineke Dijkstra’s mid-career survey in the annex galleries of the museum as opposed to the domineering rotunda space. Although this decision has resulted in an awkward fracturing of the exhibition over four floors the more intimate setting of the annex galleries is particularly well-suited to Dijkstra’s oeuvre which is quiet, intimate, and restrained.

Rootless-Forest

The Rootless Forest, Birmingham

The Rootless Forest (2012) a mobile sculpture comprising of a mini-forest made of real trees and soil planted onto a converted canal hopper, will travel the canals of Birmingham and the Black Country from August to October, with associated events at Edible Eastside, Birmingham Institute of Art and Design, Ikon Gallery and New Art Gallery Walsall. When fully constructed, The Rootless Forest will weigh 15 tonnes, with 100 trees up to 3 metres tall planted along its 16 metre length.

The Art of Chess, Saatchi Gallery & RS&A, London

The game of Chess is believed to have originated in India in the 7th century and no other game in history has been so widely reflected in art and literature. Chess remains an intriguing and complex subject for contemporary artists. The Art of Chess brings together 16 chess sets designed by some of the world’s leading contemporary artists who have chosen to create outstanding works of art, each infused with their individual style, in celebration of the ‘game of kings’ and its continued relevance to the creative arts.

Up and Coming Exhibition at The Contemporary Art Museum, St. Louis

With Americans’ attention directed this autumn toward the Presidential election, The Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis (CAM) brings together three internationally celebrated artists: Leslie Hewitt, Rosa Barba and Jonathan Horowitz to evoke the various ways that ‘the political’ manifests itself in contemporary art. Opening on the 7th September, Leslie Hewitt: Sudden Glare of the Sun and Rosa Barba: Desert — Performed, will present significant solo exhibitions,as well as transform CAM’s lobby into an interactive space to experience the Presidential election process with Jonathan Horowitz’s Your Land/My Land: Election ’12. 

Evzen-Sobek_Life-in-Blue

Ayuko Sugiura at The WW Gallery, London

The WW Gallery presents Second Skin, a solo show of works by Ayuko Sugiura. Working with sculpture and installation, Sugiura presents the viewer with a series of new skins, whether these are patterns projected onto a surface, layers of silicone, or tokens of identity; these illusory and visceral second skins present the viewer with an opportunity to question the invisible and intrinsic components of our cultural identity.

Examining the instinctual nature of religion in contemporary culture, Sugiura uses arches, crucifixes and icons as the basic structure for many of her sculptures. These references, estranged from their context, become difficult to identify.

sarah-lucas

Sarah Lucas: Ordinary Things at Henry Moore Institute, Leeds

The definition of sculpture is currently being put into question here at the Henry Moore Institute. The artist-interrogator is Sarah Lucas. She turns to the sculptural rather than the sensational. The art-historical idea of sculpture is the platform on which Lucas builds, intimating the canon of sculpture. We are given to understand that, here, Arte Povera is referenced, third century Italian votives, the dolls of Oskar Kokoscha and Hans Bellmer, the statuary of Bernini, Hepworth’s and Moore’s use of natural materials, as well as surrealist figuration. It is clear that she places herself in this canon, and from within it she causes it to refer to itself. Materially, Ordinary Things from the mundane are collected and manipulated. In this exhibition we are invited to consider the ways in which Lucas uses the figure and the cast. The experience is somewhat provocative and challenging, employing an aesthetic that results in a reflective unfolding of assumptions. It is an extensive assembly of work, numbering thirty-one individual pieces.

Noorderlicht International Photofestival, Netherlands

The 19th and possibly final edition of the Noorderlicht International Photofestival transcends photographic genres to sketch a picture of the relation between man and nature. The result is nothing less than a declaration of love: a challenging, visually breathtaking exhibition that stimulates the mind and moves the heart at the same time. Terra Cognita is a photographic journey in six chapters, with work which spans a range including landscape photography, documentary photography, art photography and computer generated images. The exhibition includes the work of around 100 photographers from The Netherlands and other countries from rising young photographers to established names. For the first time Noorderlicht is moving to an exhibition site outside the city for the festival: the main location is the Museum Belvédère. 

GOMA_SculptureIsEverything_

Sculpture Is Everything: Contemporary Works from the Collection at GOMA, Queensland.

Showcasing the Gallery’s Collection and featuring a group of major new acquisitions, Sculpture Is Everything explores the extraordinarily diverse and surprising field of contemporary sculpture. Sculpture is everything — from found objects to kinetic structures, from monuments to installation and land art, from pop assemblages to ritual objects. Form, material and three-dimensional space have been considered to define the medium of sculpture; the exhibition points to how these sculptural concerns are played out in film, photography, painting and performance.

momaprojects98_mollah---onl

Project 98: Slavs and Tatars at MoMA, New York.

Slavs and Tatars is a collective whose installations, lectures, publications, and multiples focus on relationships between Western cultures and the Eastern world.