As ever, it’s a mix of the familiar and the new making up the five finalists – three men, two women – for the 2015 Sobey Art Award, announced Wednesday by the Nova Scotia-based Sobey Art Foundation and the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia. One of the most generous purses in Canadian visual arts, the prize is given annually to a Canadian contemporary artist age 40 or under whose work has been exhibited in a public or commercial gallery 18 months prior to being named to the 25-candidate long list released each April.
The first-place winner, to be announced at a gala ceremony Oct. 28 in Halifax, will receive $50,000. Each of the four remaining finalists will get $10,000. The Sobey is a juried national prize with nominees categorized by region, of which there are five (Atlantic, Quebec, Ontario, Prairies/North, West Coast/Yukon). The 20 long-listed artists not making the finalist roster are each awarded $500.
Perhaps this year’s best-known finalist is Winnipeg photo-based artist Sarah Anne Johnson, 39. A winner of the inaugural Grange Prize for Contemporary Photography in 2008, she was a Sobey finalist in 2011 and a long-list nominee in 2009. Another repeat nominee is Halifax-based multidisciplinary artist Lisa Lipton, 35, named to the Sobey long list in 2012 and 2013. Montreal’s Jon Rafman, 34, perhaps best known for his presentation of found images from Google Street View, was long-listed last year.
Newcomers to the short list are Tehran-born Abbas Akhavan, 38, a multidisciplinary artist (video, installation, drawing, sculpture, performance) who splits his time between Toronto and Istanbul, and Raymond Boisjoly, 34, a Vancouver-based artist of Haida and Québécois descent whose work engages “issues of indigeneity … and the experiential aspects of materiality.”
The Sobey was established in 2001 as a vehicle to generate greater attention for younger professional Canadian artists working “outside the established art world.” Originally conceived as a biennial affair, the award was recast as an annual honour in 2006.
Work by this year’s Sobey Art Award finalists will be exhibited in Halifax at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia from Sept. 26 to Jan. 3, 2016 (artgalleryofnovascotia.ca).
