Ian Grose has won the 2011 Absa L’Atelier Art Award, and Isabel Mertz has been awarded the 2011 Gerard Sekoto Award for young artists.
The Absa L’Atelier Art Awards is rated as the longest-running and most influential art contest on the continent. The awards recognise the work of young and established South African artists across a wide range of mediums.
Grose wins R110 000 in cash and a six-month sabbatical at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris. Mertz wins a three-month sabbatical at the Cité, French language classes and nationwide touring exhibitions sponsored by the French Embassy, French Institute and the Alliance Française. Both prizes include airfare and free access to galleries and museums in Paris.
Grose’s work, Colour, separation, is an exploration of visual language, translation and loss.
Mertz’s work, Anthropomorphic spaces III, explores the world of inner cities, using maps and multimedia.
New and interesting visions
The judging panel led by Vulindlela Nyoni commented that during the course of the selection process, “new and interesting visions emerged in the guise of newly realised practitioners” while other more established artists had “matured in their vision”.
Paul Bayliss, Head of Arts at Absa says: “This competition should be seen as a launch pad for a career in the visual arts. Thematically, the work on show this year in the final exhibition explores a wide range of subjects. What is clear is a growing introspective or subjective response on the part of the artists to the world that they live in.”