Apollo Awards 2021

Fun online award ceremony from Apollo Magazine.

I’d not done an online awards before so thought I’d give it a go and enjoyed it. I poured myself a glass of wine and pretended I had dressed up! They were introduced by Fatema Ahmed, the acting editor of the magazine, with the usual listing of the short-listed entries and interviews with he winners. I was pleased how many of the short-listers I had heard speak recently or visited over the past year.

So the winners were :

Exhibition of the Year – Alice Neel: People Come First at the Metropolitan Museum. OK I’d not seen it but I had read a lot about it and would love to have gone.

Museum Opening of the Year – Musee Carnavelet, Paris I’d not heard of this. It looks are the history of Paris and is in a refurbished Renaissance mansion so it’s now on my list of things to do.

Book of the Year – Painting in Stone  by Fabio Barry. I listened to him in an online discussion the other week.

Digital Innovation of the Year – NFTs enough said!

Acquisition of the Year – Gift to Pallant House Gallery by M.J. Long and Colin St. John which I saw and wondered about back at the end of the summer.

Artist of the Year – Kehinde Wiley who’d I’d heard of then and have seen his work since.

Personality of the Year – David Chipperfield

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Thomas Becket: Murder and Making of a Saint

Image
Stunning exhibition at the British Museum on the life and afterlife of Thomas Becket. I studied Becket both at A Level and at university so I was really looking forward to this show and it did not disappoint. From walking in to see an old friend, the early Limoges casket showing the murder from the Victoria and Albert Museum, I was gripped. The show told the story well using fantastic objects and led you through his life, the murder, the political aftermath, his sainthood and miracles, and how Canterbury became a major pilgrimage site. It is hard to pick out the best objects as so many were wonderful. I loved that they had early copies of some of the five eyewitness accounts of the murder which made you fell you were almost touching the event. I liked the manuscript on his time in exile which was almost like a comic strip. How wonderful to get a 13th century font from Sweden which shows how far and how quickly the news that Henry II had integrated the murder spread. I think my...
Read more

Sky Arts Portrait Artist of the Year Exhibition 2019

Image
Delightful exhibition at Clarendon Fine Art showing pictures from the Sky Arts Portrait Artist of the Year TV series. I had loved the series which had set nine artists, both professional and amateur, to paint one of three celebrities. It then had a semi-final and final with them all looking at one sitter and in the final they also took on a commission. I loved the way you watched a picture build and how some were then made or spoiled by one stroke of paint.   Finding these pictures I knew so well in the flesh was therefore fascinating. None of them disappointed. My favourite artist from the final, Tom Mead, works looked just as good in real life if not better as you could see the detail. The show included his impressive self-portrait which he submitted to enter the competition, a wonderful fragmented picture of his reflection in a mirror giving a sense of movement. I loved that it included a large version of him and a miniature. His commission for the final of Jazzie B...
Read more

The Renaissance Nude

Image
Beautiful exhibition at the Royal Academy looking at the nude in Renaissance art. The show was gently themed but mainly let the pictures speak for themselves. It began by looking at the subjects, both religious and secular, which include nude figures then examined techniques and models used in these works, finishing by looking at more personal pictures. This is a period I’ve studied a lot so there were a lot of old friends and it was quite fun predicting what might appear. There were a few surprises too such as the rather surprising drawing of the Ecstatic Christ. I liked the fact the show included lots of different art forms not just paintings including sculpture, etchings, drawings and illuminated manuscripts. There were some fascinating hangs to draw comparisons particularly two sets of pictures by Giovanni Bellini and Hand Memling from almost exactly the same date. These were shown back to back in a display cabinet down the middle of one room. My favourite work was ...
Read more