23/11/15
Winter Pride Art Awards: Call for
Submissions
Following the phenomenal success of
the first two Winter Pride Art Awards, Winter Pride has launched its latest art
competition, the Winter Pride Art Awards 2016, targeting
emerging artists regardless of their sexuality.“The competition has always been open to everyone,” explains
director, Simon Tarrant. “It was last year and the year before too, but there
was a general misunderstanding that you had to be gay to enter. I want to
correct that. Why should it just be gay artists? It’s in the context of a gay
event but I don’t think art should be limited like that. The whole ethos of the
gay community is to be open and out there and I think it’s important for this
to be open to everyone, in the way that society isn’t necessarily always open
to us. The art is what counts. It’s not just to do with your sexuality.”
The Winter Pride Art Awards seek to
promote and support artists, whose work challenges binary norms and celebrates diversity
of sexual identity and expression. This year’s theme is Line of Beauty –
exploring sexuality, gender and identity and entries are invited from the
following disciplines: drawing, illustration, painting, sculpture, installation,
fashion & textiles, jewellery, photography, print, moving image and
performance art. Artists are encouraged to create work that examines modern day notions about the interpretation of
beauty in relation to sexuality, gender and identity.
This year’s programme will include a
press preview of the Art Awards finalists at the Fashion and Textile Museum on
14 April 2016, attended by key media from the national, arts
and LGBT+ press, and a public exhibition at the Islington Arts Factory from 15–23
April 2016. Also, for the first time, the public exhibition will feature a
series of works developed by students from Middlesex School of Art and Design,
who have participated in workshops on gender identity and sexuality politics.
This year’s Art Awards selection
panel includes the Winter Pride Art Awards director, Simon Tarrant; the
celebrity sculptress, Frances Segelman; the director of visual arts at the Islington
Arts Factory, Eleanor Pearce; the philosopher and writer, Daniel Barnes; and
DIVA’s own arts editor, Anna McNay.
As Stephen Fry says: “The Winter
Pride Art Awards is a unique opportunity for up-and-coming artists to showcase
their creativity at a key LGBT+ artistic and cultural
event – creative ventures of this kind are all-important for both the arts and
LGBT+ communities.”
The closing date for entries is 31
March 2016. For more information and to enter, go to: http://www.winterprideuk.com/how-to-enter/
Also published via DIVA online