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| Pham Huy Thong - Brotherhood (Vietnam) |
The Asia Pacific Breweries Foundation Signature Art Prize will be awarded in November. About 130 works across 24 countries and territories have been nominating for the Grand Prize of S$ 45,000, which is being organised by the Singapore Art Museum
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| Jompet Kuswidananto - Java's Machine Phatasmagoria (Indonesia) |
This second edition of the triennial APB Foundation Signature Art Prize includes a wide range of media, from painting and print to video art and photography. Established practitioners as well as emerging talents nominated this year include Daniel Crooks (Australia), Vandy Rattana (Cambodia), Qiu Anxiong (China), Eko Nugroho (Indonesia), Makoto Aida (Japan), Fauzan bin Omar (Malaysia), Htein Lin (Myanmar), Imran Qureshi (Pakistan), Louie Cordero (Philippines), Vertical Submarine (Singapore), Sook-Jin Jo (South Korea) and Chen Chieh-jen (Taiwan). The 15 short-list finalist artworks will be announced Oct 1 and the winner Nov 18.
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| Makoto Aida's Ash Color Mountains (Japan) |
There are some very interesting artworks. I’ll put below a few of my favorites (very strong Japanese contenders this year), some of which you may be familiar with from previous posts…One puzzling thing though, several works nominated have already been collected by museums, including four by the Singapore Art Museum (which indicate it has an eye for strong works, but also raises some questions of conflict of interest, given that the director of the Singapore Art Museum is also one of the 5 judges for the prize!). Should works already collected by museums or in a few cases private collectors be included in the running for prize? Who are those private collectors? If one of those works does win the prize, obviously its value will go up. Lot of questions that distract from the true underlying value of such prize. During a press conf. journalists were assured there was no conflict, because the director will recuse himself from the discussions when one of the museum's works is involved, still…
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| Alfredo Esquillo Jr's Libing at Sakla (Philippines) |
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| Takashi Kuribayashi's Wald aus Wald (Japan) |
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| Kohei Nawa - PixCall-Deer 17 (Japan) |
