Shortlist for the £3,000 Catlin Art Prize for recent graduates announced this week.
As much as they may occasionally be derided as pretentious, precious layabouts – and that School of Saatchi show has hardly helped – art students actually have it pretty tough. Years of coming up with weird ideas, slaving away in studios, hoping that your tutors like what you’re up to are then followed by a sudden blank.
It’s not like studying accountancy or something, where there’s a career there, ready and waiting. Art students graduate and, if they’re lucky, get a commission or two after their final degree show. But then what?
Maybe get a job in a shop one day a week to make ends meet? It soon becomes two, then three days, and before long you’re a Topshop aisle manager, not an artist at all. Where did the dream go?
Well, this is where the Catlin Art Prize comes in. Now in its fourth year, the prize identifies and rewards the potential of recent graduates, long before the judges of, say, the Turner Prize, have even heard of you.
Where most gallerists and critics are happy simply to potter around a few London degree shows every year, the curator of the Catlin Art Prize, Justin Hammond, goes round every art school across the UK. That is one serious undertaking.
Hammond then publishes the Catlin Art Guide – which features the most promising 40 names gleaned from this nationwide talent trawl. This has become something of a bible for lazy (primarily London-based) art industry types and means that we (ahem, I mean they) can keep a careful eye on these stars of the future.
These 40 names are then narrowed down to a shortlist of eight, of which one will walk away with the £3,000 Catlin Art Prize. Works by all eight artists form an exhibition which goes on show at Village Underground this May. We're particularly excited about Alex Virji's semi-figurative portraits and Victoria Matkin's ethereal constructions.
As 2009 winner Sarah Lederman says: “The Catlin Art Prize… has certainly given me critical and financial encouragement to keep making art.” I caught up with Justin at this year’s London Art Fair: “The whole thing was conceived as an interesting side-project,” he said, “but it’s now completely taken over!” Today’s young artists should be extremely grateful.
Image credit: David A Smith, 'Shuck', anatomical canine skeleton, glow wire, enamel paint, 50 x 30 x 14cm, 2009
The Catlin Art Prize is at Village Underground from 14th-23rd May 2010.
Click here to see all London exhibitions.
Click here for things to do in London.
