Last night I was invited to the Sobey Art Award fancy do. The one where they announce the winner. and as you might have heard Ms. Pootoogook is now $50,000 richer. It does not seem that it has been picked up by the French press, yet.
At the do, (now here is the only time I wanna sound like I'm writing a social column) I saw Maurice Forget, Billy Mavreas, Isa Tousignant, Meredith Carruthers, Samuel Lallouz, Eric Devlin, Marc DeSerres, Bernard Lamarre, Marc Mayer, Dil Hildebrand, Jeffrey Spaulding, Guy Laliberte, Mireille Chery, Christine Redfern, Paul Litherland, and Katia Meir. That list however, probably tells you more about me, than it does about the award.
I wanted to get the pamphlet that they published for the award autographed by all five artists,
however, I was only successful in getting Ms. Pootoogook's. Maybe I'll have better luck next year.
Some of the things that I found interesting were
a) that Mathew Reichertz has now been shortlisted twice in two years for some pretty significant cash. I'm not certain what it says about the RBC Painting Competition or the Sobey Award or the state of the arts in the Atlantic provinces that he didn't win either one.
b) according to Ray Cronin, it costs about $200,000 to give away $50,000.
c) Whoever is running Scotiabank's promo and feel good about the community division not only got themselves double booked, but then stood up the artists. There was another prize being given away in Canada last night. It was worth 20% less than the Sobey Award, and it was also sponsored by Scotiabank. Guess which one does not get a press release on the Scotiabank website? No wonder why the guy from Hydro Quebec got to announce the winner. Although I am fairly certain that if I were to talk to someoen from Scotiabank, I might get a different response.
d) And where was Jean-Pierre Gauthier?
Then gazing into my crystal ball... next year's list of nominees will include David Altmejd, Julie Andree T. and Francine Lalonde among others.
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