Each year, Aesthetica selects a lively group of industry experts for the Aesthetica Art Prize Judging Panel. In 2017, our jury comprises influential art figures, including curators, directors and artists whose expertise span all media. They met last month at York Art Gallery to discuss the shortlisted works. Following his appearance at the inaugural Future Now Symposium in 2016, Olivier Richon, Head of Photography at the Royal College of Art, returned to the city to select the winning pieces with his fellow jury members.
Olivier has led his subject at the RCA since 1997, where he is a passionate advocate for his medium specialism. His own photographic practice investigates the artifice of representation through the genre of the still life and animal portraiture. Research questions include the relation between the eye and other sense impressions; photography and literature; temporality and narrative forms in the still and the moving image. A selection of his work is in the collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum, Musée d’art moderne de la ville de Paris; Museum Folkwang, Essen; National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto; Brooklyn Museum; Tate Britain. He is currently completing a book on one photograph by Walker Evans, Kitchen Corner, Alabama 1936.
The RCA is an influential, wholly postgraduate university institution of art and design, offering the degrees of MA, MPhil and PhD. It is made up of a concentrated community of artists, designers and communicators. Approximately 1,500 students are supported by nearly 500 staff and over 800 visiting lecturers, all spread across six academic Schools and situated in central London. In addition to its taught programmes, the RCA is a research-intensive environment, with faculty members of international stature working alongside early-career research fellows.
Find out more: www.rca.ac.uk.
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Entries are open for the Aesthetica Art Prize until 31 August.
Credits
1. Jeremy Underwood, Human Debris, 2014. Aesthetica Art Prize 2017 Longlist.
