Sobey Art Award Announces Shortlisted Artists for 2019 Edition -ARTnews

The Sobey Art Foundation and National Gallery of Canada have named the five finalists for the 2019 Sobey Art Award, which is presented annually to a Canada-based artist age 40 or younger. The finalists, who represent Canada’s five geographic regions, are D’Arcy Wilson (from the Atlantic region), Nicolas Grenier (Québec), Stephanie Comilang (Ontario), Kablusiak (the Prairies and the North), and Anne Low (the West Coast and the Yukon).

An exhibition of works by the short-listed artists will open at the Art Gallery of Alberta on October 5, and the 2019 Sobey Art Award winner—to be revealed on November 15—will receive 100,000 Canadian dollars ($75,300). Each of the other four finalists will get 25,000 Canadian dollars ($18,800); artists on the long list will each receive 2,000 Canadian dollars ($1,500).

Josée Drouin-Brisebois, senior curator of contemporary art at the National Gallery of Canada, chairs the jury for the 2019 award, which includes Peter Dykhuis, director and curator at the Dalhousie Art Gallery; Jo-Ann Kane, curator at the National Bank Collection; Swapnaa Tamhane, an independent curator, artist, and writer; Lindsey Sharman, curator at the Art Gallery of Alberta; Nigel Prince, departing executive director of the Contemporary Art Gallery, in Vancouver (he takes up the post of director of Artes Mundi International Visual Arts Exhibition and Prize in the UK in September); and Henriette Bretton-Meyer, curator at the Kunsthal Charlottenborg in Copenhagen.

Drouin-Brisebois said in a statement, “The shortlist echoes our excitement about younger practices in all regions of the country and aims to bring new awareness to the five artists’ inventive work.”