The Curatorial Panel for the 2010 Sobey Art Award has chosen Daniel Barrow as the recipient of the $50,000 prize. Daniel Barrow represents the Prairies and the North. The announcement was made during a gala event held at the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal.
The other shortlisted artists for this year's Award were Brendan Lee Satish Tang (West Coast and Yukon), Brendan Fernandes (Ontario), Patrick Bernatchez (Québec), and Emily Vey Duke and Cooper Battersby (Atlantic). Each of these talented artists receives $5,000 in prize money from the Award's creator, the Sobey Art Foundation.
In commenting on Daniel Barrow's achievement, the curatorial committee said, "The unanimous choice for the 2010 Sobey Art Award is Daniel Barrow. Over the past 15 years Barrow has created a unique, self-sustaining fictional world composed of drawing, storytelling and manual animation of the antiquated technology of the overhead projector. His virtuoso performances awaken a sense of empathy in the viewer. Wry, politically astute, and strangely heartbreaking, his comic narratives address love, loss, gender, and media culture. The crux of Barrow's practice is the problem of how we are all obliged, in order to proceed with our lives, to continually strive to better ourselves and the world around us, in ways misguided or not, transforming the abject into the sublime, heartbreak into redemption."
The 2010 Sobey Art Award Curatorial Panel consists of: Grant Arnold, Curator, Vancouver Art Gallery; Jen Budney, Associate Curator, Mendel Art Gallery; Philip Monk, Director, Art Gallery of York University; Lesley Johnstone, Curator, Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal; David Diviney, Curator, Art Gallery of Nova Scotia.
Since its inception, the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia has organized and administered the Sobey Art Award and its accompanying exhibition. Every other year, the Award travels to a gallery or museum outside of Halifax.
The 2010 Sobey Art Award shortlist exhibition is on view at the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal until January 4, 2011.
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