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).

Emi Eu has been an important member of STPI – Creative Workshop & Gallery Singapore from 2001. Since becoming Director in 2009 and now Executive Director, she has led the organization towards global expansion, introducing exciting collaborations with renowned artists both within Asia and from the West.

Under her directorship, STPI became the first gallery from Singapore to participate in the prestigious art fair, Art Basel in Basel, back in 2013. To date, it is the only gallery from Singapore to participate in all three editions of the Art Basel fairs. She is a member of the Selection Committee for Art Basel Hong Kong. Since 2019 she has been heading S.E.A. Focus, an initiative led by STPI which brings together a curated selection of some of the finest artists and galleries from across Southeast Asia to showcase contemporary art in and of the region.

Eu previously held the position of Programme Director at Fondation d'entreprise Hermès Aloft in Singapore from 2007 to 2019. She also served as the Vice President and President between 2012 and 2018 for Art Galleries Association Singapore (AGAS). She was an Adjunct Faculty for the course Art History & Civilisation: East & West at the Singapore Management University from 2001 to 2017.

Christopher Le Brun is a painter, printmaker and sculptor. Born in Portsmouth in 1951 he trained at the Slade and Chelsea Schools of Art, London. In his early career, he was a double prize winner at the John Moores exhibitions, 1978 & 1980, also showing in the Venice Biennale, 1982, and the ground-breaking Zeitgeist at the Martin-Gropius Bau, Berlin 1982. His work can be found in museum collections including the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Arts, New York; Tate, the V&A and the British Museum, London; the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia and the Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, USA.

For the last thirty years Le Brun has continuously served as a trustee of major British art institutions: Tate, National Gallery, Dulwich Picture Gallery, the Royal Drawing School and the National Portrait Gallery. Elected to the Royal Academy of Arts in 1996, he became the first ever Professor of Drawing. He was subsequently elected President from 2011-2019. During this period, he oversaw the most significant master plan redevelopment in the Academy’s 250 year history and is widely acknowledged as having revitalised the Academy’s reputation through its world class exhibitions, post-graduate school, and Academician membership.
Le Brun is a painter, sculptor and printmaker. He was elected to the RA in the category Engraver in recognition of the importance he ascribes to print media, and his long-term association with master printmakers in the UK and abroad.

His work is characterised by an adherence to the essential values of touch, light, space and colour while maintaining a questioning and strongly individual stance in relation to contemporary art history. Early on he was described variously as a post-modernist or neo-expressionist. His art is deeply rooted in the long tradition of the English appreciation of landscape and nature - whether expressed in painting, poetry or music - which provide a common ground frequently referred to throughout his work.

Philip Tinari is Director and CEO of UCCA Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing. Since joining in 2011, he has led its transformation from a founder-driven private museum into China’s leading independent contemporary art institution, presenting a wide range of exhibitions and programs to an annual audience of over one million visitors.

In 2018, UCCA opened a second location, UCCA Dune, in an award-winning building buried under the sand on the beach in Beidaihe.

Tinari was founding editor of the magazine LEAP and is a contributing editor of Artforum. He was co-curator of the 2017 exhibition “Art and China after 1989: Theater of the World” at the Guggenheim and SFMOMA, and curator of the 2016 exhibition “Bentu: Chinese Artists in a Time of Turbulence and Transformation” at Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris. He is a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum and a fellow of the Public Intellectuals Program of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations. Fluent in Mandarin, Tinari holds degrees from Duke and Harvard.

• 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.