John Moores 24
The Walker Art Gallery, 16 September - 26 November 2006
John Moores Exhibition of Contemporary Painting is the UK's most prestigious and longest-running national open painting competition. John Moores 24, is as exciting as inspiring as ever and forms a major strand of Liverpool Biennial. Organised by National Museums Liverpool and supported by the John Moores Liverpool Exhibition Trust, A Foundation and Official Hotel Partner, Radission SAS Hotel Liverpool, the exhibition has been hosted by The Walker Art Gallery since 1957.
The competition celebrates the vitality of contemporary British painting, and is open to all UK-based artists working with paint. It is judged anonymously, without the identity of the artists being disclosed to the competition jury, and thus is decided purely on the merit of each individual work.
The £25,000 first prizewinner of the prestigious John Moores 24 exhibition of contemporary painting at the Walker Art Gallery is Martin Greenland for his stunning invented landscape Before Vermeer’s Clouds.
The significance of the title is that the sky in the painting is copied from A View of Delft by leading Dutch painter Jan Vermeer (1632-75) – a work that has fascinated Martin for 30 years. He says Before Vermeer’s Clouds also has the same appearance of stability and unhurried peace as Vermeer’s.
Martin says about his winning oil on canvas painting, which features a waterfall and a distant town with a strange multi-coloured tower: “It’s a perfectly levelling thing to do, exploring landscape both real, as on a walk, or by completely inventing it - exploring the illusion of landscape made by the tactile breadth of oil paint.
“The first instance is about absorption, meditation, analysis, the second about realisation, connection, revelation - a show of things more or less understood. Completely inventing is an obsession but not a chore.
“It may seem futile to make the works seem as though they have been observed or taken from photographs but inventing gives the work reason for existence - what is shown exists only in this painted illusion. It’s a deeply satisfying thing to do and oil on canvas is still the broadest, most perfect vehicle for this.”
Martin Greenland was born in Marsden,Yorkshire in 1962. He studied at Nelson and Colne College, Lancashire, and Exeter College of Art. His work has been included in exhibitions at the Piccadilly Gallery (Cork Street), London, 1997, Ainscough Gallery, Liverpool, 1998, Huddersfield Art Gallery 1999 and Piccadilly Gallery (Dover Street), London, 2000.
He was awarded the GCI Financial Purchase Prize in The Discerning Eye, Mall Galleries, London 2000. He exhibited in four consecutive John Moores exhibitions in 1989, 1991, 1993 and 1995.
The four other prizewinners – each receiving £2,500 – are:
Matthew Burrows: Baptism (oil on linen). Matthew was born on the Wirral in 1971. He studied at the University of Central England, Birmingham, and the Royal College of Art London. He has shown in group exhibitions including Presence, St. Paul’s Cathedral London 2004 and Folklore APT Gallery London. Matthew Burrows’ solo exhibitions include A Divine Comedy which toured Gloucester Cathedral, Gloucester City Art Gallery and Huddersfield Art Gallery, Flattering Overtures Eagle Gallery/Emma Hill Fine Art, London, and Anyone Here? Midlands Art Centre, Birmingham.
Graham Crowley: Red Reflection (oil on canvas). Graham was born in Romford in 1950. He studied at St. Martin’s School of Art, London, and the Royal College of Art, London. He has held a number of significant teaching posts, most recently professor of painting at the Royal College of Art. He has shown in seven previous John Moores exhibitions and won joint second prize in 1987. He is represented in several public collections and has exhibited in numerous group shows, winning the ING Purchase Prize at The Discerning Eye Mall Galleries, London. His most recent solo show was at Beaux Arts, London.
Vincent Hawkins: After Paul Nash (acrylic on canvas). Vincent was born in Hertfordshire in 1959. He studied at Maidstone College of Art. His group shows include Recent Graduates Show (selected from art colleges in the south east), Angela Best Gallery, Canterbury, Old Subject New Object Bonington Gallery, Nottingham, and an exhibition at Clapham Art Gallery, London. He has been shortlisted for the Jerwood Drawing Prize 2006.
James White: In the Basement (Kit II). James was born in Tiverton, Devon in 1967. He studied at West Surrey College of Art and Design and at London’s Wimbledon School of Art and the Royal College of Art. Group exhibitions in 2005 were God is bored of us FMCG London 2005 and Chambres a Part Hotel Sexx, Paris. Solo shows include James White Gavin Turk’s studio, London, The Incidental Monumental 2 Modern Art, London, Atoll Fig-1, London, Paradise Casey Kaplan Gallery, New York, Paintings Museum 52, London and United Elements MW Projects, London.
The judges were artists Tracey Emin, Sir Peter Blake and former John Moores prizewinner Jason Brooks along with the British Council’s director of visual arts Andrea Rose and curator of fine art at the Walker Art Gallery Ann Bukantas. They first looked at 2,300 entries on slides – the highest number of entries in 43 years – and chose a shortlist. The jury picked the prizewinners and 52 paintings in the exhibition after seeing 268 actual paintings on the shortlist.
Julian Treuherz, keeper of art galleries at National Museums Liverpool, says: “Every artist in this exciting show has contributed something unique. John Moores 24 is a tribute to the vitality, inventiveness, imagination and sheer variety of work being produced by some of the best painters in Britain today.”
The prizewinner of the 2004 John Moores 23 exhibition of contemporary painting was Alexis Harding for his oil and gloss paint work Slump/Fear (orange/black) 2004.