This year’s recipients of “Awards for visual Artists.”for the Paul Hamlyn Foundation went to a variety of Installation,Video and Text based artists, with one painter thrown in for good measure. Five visual artists were named prizewinners on 2 November: Janice Kerbel, Amalia Pica, John Smith, Sue Tompkins, and Rose Wylie. Most of the artists were London-based except Tompkins, who lives and works in Northamptonshire, and Wylie, who hails from Kent. The awards come with a cash prize of approximately seventy-two thousand dollars, distributed to each winner over the next three years. Polly Staple, director of the Chisenhale Gallery and a juror for the award, said: “Beyond a few headline-grabbing names, the majority of artists earn only a modest income from occasional sales of work, small grants, and teaching. The Paul Hamlyn Foundation award can be a lifeline for artists providing—crucially—unconditional support and recognising the quiet persistence and exploration of ideas and new forms.”
Previous winnerss include Angela de la Cruz, Ben Rivers, Melanie Gilligan, Ryan Gander, Gustav Metzger, Tomma Abts, and Jeremy Deller.
The Arts programme supports the development and dissemination of new ideas to increase people’s experience, enjoyment and involvement in the arts in the UK.The funding benefits organisations and groups through our Open Grants and Special Initiatives. The Open Grants scheme recieves applications from organisations proposing innovative activities that we think will have a valuable impact for individuals and communities, organisations, and policy and practice. We work closely with applicants to develop high-quality proposals for consideration by the Arts Committee and Board of Trustees.
Special Initiatives are also in operation. Some of these, such as Awards for Artists and the Breakthrough Fund, seek to support individuals and organisations, and others, such as our new work on Artists working in participatory settings, focus on developing a sector within the arts.The Hamlyn Foundation also seeks to further the understanding of the relationships between the arts and our other programmes. They are interested in how participation in the arts contributes to education and learning processes, and how the arts and/or education and learning affect social change.