Now on its 12th year, the Ateneo Art Awards was established to honor the memory of the founding benefactor of the Ateneo Art Gallery, Fernando Zobel (1924-1984). Originally conceived to shine the spotlight on young and emerging artists, the Ateneo Art Awards is now a venue to recognize outstanding achievements in art writing as well, with the 2014 inauguration of the Purita Kalaw-Ledesma Art Criticism Prize.
Shortlists of 12 artists and four writers have been drawn up by their respective juries. The Fernando Zobel Prizes for Visual Art are awarded to three Filipino visual artists, below the age of 36, for outstanding works exhibited between May 2, 2014 to May 1, 2015 . The Purita Kalaw-Ledesma Prize is awarded to the author of a review of an exhibition selected by the representatives from the Ateneo Art Gallery, the Kalaw-Ledesma Foundation, and The Philippine Star.
In alphabetical order, the 12 shortlisted visual artists are:
Pio Abad for The Collection of Jane Ryan and William Saunders, a solo exhibition at Jorge B. Vargas Museum and Filipiniana Research Center;
Catalina Africa for her solo show Reverse Boomerangs and Other Exercises for Pleasure, shown at 1335 Mabini;
Charles Buenconsejo for Unending Void, a solo exhibition at ArtInformal;
Frank Callaghan for Dead Ends, a solo show at Silverlens Galleries, Manila;
Buen Calubayan for “Eternal Landscape”, shown at the Ayala Museum as part of the exhibition, The Triumph of Philippine Art;
Ian Carlo Jaucian for his work in In the Year 2000, a joint exhibition mounted at Silverlens Galleries, Manila;
Lui Medina for her solo, Lui Medina, shown at ArtInformal;
Veronica Pee for the solo, Pocket Universe, shown at ArtInformal;
Luis Santos for Measuring Distances, shown at Silverlens Galleries, Manila;
Maria Taniguchi for her “Untitled” works, shown at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Antwerp, as part of the group show Don’t You Know Who I Am?;
Derek Tumala for Sacred Geometry, a solo show by The Drawing Room for Art Fair Philippines 2015;
And Ryan Villamael for the solo exhibition Isles, shown at Silverlens Galleries, Manila.
For the Purita Kalaw-Ledesma prizes, the writers and their shortlisted works are:
Paola S. Acuin for “Lakas ng Loob: Re-introducing Cesar Legaspi,” on Cesar Legaspi: The Brave Modern at the Ayala Museum;
Renato Paolo V. Aguila for “Rallying to Standstill: A review of Ethos, Bathos, Pathos,” at the Jorge B. Vargas Museum and Filipiniana Research Center;
Mia Angela A. Dagsaan for “Fictions of Word and Image,” a review of Propaganda, exhibited at the Lopez Memorial Museum and Library;
Paolo Miguel G. Tiausas, “On Curating Futures,” also a review of Propaganda, exhibited at the Lopez Memorial Museum and Library.
The works of all the shortlisted artists and writers will be exhibited at the East Wing of the Shangri-la Plaza Mall, from Sept. 11 to 21, and at the Ateneo Art Gallery from Sept. 28 to Dec. 5. Three artists and one writer will be awarded at the ceremony to be held in the mall’s Grand Atrium on Sept. 17. The winning artists are contenders for international residency grants funded by the Ateneo Art Gallery and its partner institutions: La Trobe University Visual Arts Centre in Bendigo, Australia, Artesan Gallery in Singapore, and Liverpool Hope University in Liverpool, United Kingdom.
The winner of the Purita Kalaw-Ledesma prize for art criticism is granted a bi-monthly column in The Philippine Star, with an honorarium of P10,000.00 per published piece.Photos courtesy of Silverlens Galleries
The Ateneo Art Gallery. 2/F Rizal Library Special Collections Building, Ateneo de Manila University, Loyola Heights, Quezon City. For more information, visit their website or contact Alice Sarmiento, AAG Exhibitions Coordinator, at (02) 426-6488 or e-mail msarmiento@ateneo.edu.