The Awards

Statement from the jury:

"The jury is unanimously convinced by the fervor of Ciara Phillips’ commitment to the medium of printmaking, the boldness of her formal and social experiments within it, and the maturity and confidence of her artistic outlook and attainment in general. Her belief in collaborative practice, manifest in her ongoing Workshop project, grows from a set of political and aesthetic concerns that she elaborates and elevates through concerted making.

Beyond her graphic and compositional prowess, Phillips is also a keen spatial thinker, adept at expanding beyond the conventional wall and frame. Without sacrificing seriousness, her work is imbued with a sense of wonder and delight in the serendipity and collaborative nature of this creative process. The jury further believes that Phillips is at an ideal point in her career to both benefit from and bring credit to the prize, giving renewed prominence to the field of printmaking and the Foundation’s role within it.

Roma Auskalnyte, (Lithuania), Christiane Baumgartner (Germany), Andrea Büttner (Germany), Phillip Chen (USA), Weixin Quek Chong (Singapore),Chad Cordeiro & Nathaniel Sheppard III (South Africa), Keith Coventry (Great Britain), Damien De Lepeleire (Belgium), Peter Drew (Australia), Christian Rodriguez Fuentes (Chile), Matjaž Geder (Slovenia), Versia Abeda Harris (Barbados), Mattias Härenstam(Sweden), Merja Isomaa-James (Finland), Hansina Iversen (Faroe Islands), Michael Iveson (Northern Ireland), Heehyun Jeong (South Korea), Koo Jeong A (South Korea), Banele Khoza (South Africa), Michael Kirkman (Great Britain), Thomas Kilpper(Germany), Elias Mung'ora (Kenya), Emma Nishimura (Canada), Octora (Indonesia), Kouseki Ono (Japan), Renata Papišta (Bosnia-Hercegovina), Srikanta Paul (India), Belkis Ramirez (Dominican Republic),Miriam Rudolph (Paraguay), Giancarlo Scaglia (Peru), Bahia Shehab (Lebanon/ Egypt), Shahzhia Sikander (Pakistan/ USA), Viktoria Wendel Skousen (Denmark), Puritip Suriyapatarapun (Thailand), Ephrem Solomon Tegegn (Ethiopia), Thammasin Darunkan (Thailand), Alexander Tovborg (Denmark), Tatu Tuominen (Finland), Nicolás Paris Veléz (Colombia)Marianne Vierø (Denmark), Lee Wagstaff (Great Britain), Bill Woodrow (Great Britain)

Karo Akporiere (Nigeria), Nazgol Ansarinia (Iran), Ewan Atkinson (Barbados), Tauba Auerbach (USA), Benjamin Badock (Germany), Jyotirmoy Dalapati (India), Boris Campos Ernst (Chile), Esther Fleckner (Denmark), Joscelyn E. Gardner (Barbados/Canada), Fuki Hamada (Japan), Johnny Hannah (UK), Samueli Heimonen (Finland), Joseph James (USA/Finland), Jussi Juurinen (Finland), Tom Kosmo (Norway), Katja Mater (Netherlands), Sabine Moritz (Germany), Jon Erik Nyholm (Denmark), Thom Ogonga (Kenya), Kyra Pape (South Africa), Praween Piangchoompu (Thailand), Liliana Porter (Argentine/USA), Julia Rommel (USA), Morten Schelde (Denmark), Andreas Siekmann (Germany), Slavs and Tartars (Eurasia), Josh Smith (USA), Kate Sweetapple (Australia), Elmar Vestner (Germany), Richard Woods (UK), Mojca Zlokarnik (Slovenia).

Cathrine Dahl and Ørjan Aas (Norway), Daniel Milan (Denmark), Mikael Kihlman (Sweden), Annu Vertanen (Finland), Valgerdur Hauksdòttir (Iceland), Minako Masui (Japan / Sweden), Ane Mette Hol (Norway), Hugleikur Dagsson (Iceland), Svend-Allan Sørensen (Denmark), Tuula Lehtinen (Finland), Vappu Johansson (Finland), Elina Sipilä (Finland), Adam Saks ( Denmark).

Rachel Kent is the recently appointed CEO of the Bundanon Trust, which will launch its new Art Museum and Bridge for Creative Learning in 2022. Prior to this, she was the Chief Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) Australia (2011-2021), leading its curatorial team, shaping the organisation’s artistic vision, and advocating for creative culture on national and international platforms.

Rachel has presented exhibitions in Australia, New Zealand, Japan, the United States and Canada, working with artists such as Yoko Ono, Grayson Perry, Yinka Shonibare MBE, Tatsuo Miyajima, David Goldblatt, Cornelia Parker and Doug Aitken. Her exhibitions have been presented at the Brooklyn Museum, New York; National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC; MCA San Diego; Musee d’art contemporain de Montreal; and the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo.

Rachel sits on editorial, academic and government advisory panels, and speaks and publishes widely on modern and contemporary art. She is the editor and author of multiple award-winning artist monographs, working with Prestel, Phaidon and Thames & Hudson.

Pablo del Val (b. 1964) has decades of experience as a cultural manager, curator, and director of contemporary art galleries around the world.

For the last 6 years he has held the position of Artistic Director of Art Dubai. Art Dubai has been a major catalyst in the local, regional and international conversations on art from the Middle East and surrounding region (MENASA – Middle East, North Africa & South Asia), helping to put art from these territories onto the global map. As one of the world’s most international art fairs, Art Dubai has further expanded its commitment to cultivating a culture of discovery, offering exciting new global perspectives and broadening conversations about art beyond traditional western-led geographical scopes and narratives.

Previously del Val has held the position of Artistic Director of ZONA MACO, Mexico City International Contemporary Art Fair (2012 – 2015) as well as the Director at La Conservera, Centro de Arte Contemporáneo, Mucia, Spania (2009 – 2013).

Qiu Zhijie (b. 1969) is dean and professor at the School of Experimental Art at the Central Academy of Fine Arts, and professor of the School of Intermedia Art at China Academy of Art. As an artist, Qiu Zhijie is known for his calligraphy and ink painting, photography, video, installation and performance works. His art is representational of a new kind of experimental communication between the Chinese literati tradition and contemporary art, as well as social participation and the power of self-liberation within art. As an art writer, Qiu Zhijie has published several books including: The Image and Post Modernism (2002), Give Me a Mask (2003), The Limit of Freedom (2003), The Photography after Photography (2004), On Total Art (2012).

He was the curator of the first video art exhibition in China in 1996 and curated a series of “Post-sense Sensibility” exhibitions during 1999 and 2005 promoting the young generation of Chinese artists. In 2012 he was the chief curator of the 9th Shanghai Biennale “Reactivation”, and in 2017 the chief curator of the Chinese Pavilion of the 57th Venice Biennale. Qiu Zhijie was shortlisted for the Hugo Boss Prize administered by the Guggenheim Foundation due to his work of The Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge Project. He was awarded “Artist of the Year” at the Art China Awards in 2009 and was nominated for the same award in 2016.

His works are included in major museum collections and institutions around the world, including the Guggenheim Museum in NYC, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, Foundation Louis Vuitton, Foundation by Christian Dior, Ullens Foundation, Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, and the White Rabbit Gallery in Sydney.

• Emi Eu, Christopher Le Brun and Philip Tinari - 2020
• Lars Nittve, Mark Nash and Tauba Auerbach - 2018
• Starr Figura, Ute Meta Bauer and Martin Puryear - 2016
• HM Queen Sonja, Ian McKeever, Rasmus Urwald, Tiina Kivinen and Ole Larsen - 2014
• HM Queen Sonja, Ørnulf Opdahl, Kjell Nupen, Ole Larsen and Karin Hellandsjø - 2012

The Lifetime Achievement Award is a celebration of an artist’s career and lifetime contribution to graphic art and printmaking. The 2020 Award goes to one of Europe’s most influential contemporary figurative artists. She is celebrated for her ambiguous complex compositions in paintings, drawings, and collages, as well as prints. Throughout her career, printmaking has been a space for exploration, and a fundamental part of her artistic oeuvre. Through her technical prowess, the artist has been in dialogue with the particularities of different printing techniques, matching and expanding upon them to interlock with her unique mode of expression.

Paula Rego (b. 1935 in Lisbon, Portugal) explores complex subject matters; psychologically charged depictions of human dramas and narratives. She depicts dysfunctional family relations, political systems, and social structures. Female perspectives are often at the forefront both thematically and compositionally. Novels, poems, nursery rhymes and fairy tales are reinterpreted in her prints, underlined by unconventional compositional devices. Extraordinary lithographs, intaglio- and screen prints are often produced in series. Their themes are many-faceted and detailed, open to the viewers’ interpretations. Paula Rego plays with both the expected and unexpected; disregarding scale and linear time, while at the same time juxtaposing important and less important pictorial elements. Rego’s work can be be viewed in the light of Francisco Goya and William Hogarth, where prints are used as political and social commentary, yet in their execution and exuberance they are highly original and modern.

It is a great honor for the QSPA board to present Paula Rego with the second Lifetime Achievement Award for her distinguished contribution to the art of printmaking through a long and outstanding career.

The Lifetime Achievement Award is a celebration of an artist’s career and lifetime contribution to graphic art and printmaking. The 2018 Award goes to an artist who has been an important figure on the international art scene for many decades. He is one of the most popular and influential British artists of the 20th century. The winner is not only critically acclaimed as a painter and sophisticated printmaker, but also widely appreciated as a skillful draughtsman, technical innovator, photographer, and stage designer.

David Hockney (b. 1937) made his first prints as a student in 1954 and has since created a large body of exquisite works in traditional printmaking techniques, such as etchings and lithography, as well as experimenting with “homemade” prints; using photocopies and faxes, and computer drawings. Printmaking and the restless investigation of new mediums and different techniques, has for Hockney, been an integral part of his examination and fascination with formal challenges, exploration of the spatial ideas of perspective, and the dialogue between abstraction and the figural. The artist’s technical mastery and lifelong experiments in printmaking has expanded the possibilities and our understanding of this field.

It is a great honour for the QSPA board to present David Hockney with the first Lifetime Achievement Award for his distinguished contribution to the art of printmaking.