Lecturers up for top art prize

TWO lecturers from the School of Art have been named as contenders for this year’s prestigious Northern Art Prize.

Senior lecturer in Interactive Art Dave Griffiths and senior lecturer in Fine Art David Osbaldeston are among the 13 longlisted nominees who are competing for the £16,500 prize money.

David Osbaldeston said: “The Northern Art Prize has now established itself as a significant platform to showcase artists who work in the North and I’m delighted to join a growing number of colleagues in the School of Art who in previous years have been nominated, shortlisted, and also won the Northern Art Prize itself.

“Many of my ideas are driven by how recognition and miscommunication impact and disrupt our experience of time and place. I also like to physically manipulate language, so perhaps at some point (depending on the judges) I might get the opportunity to produce my own embossed heraldic certificate of merit.”

Diverse nominees

Dave Griffiths said: “It’s really great news, for me it’s a fantastic recognition of having plugged away at a body of work, and a recognition of the North as a good place to work. It’s exciting to have that and the potential opportunities that could come from that.

“Babel Fiche revolves around ideas to do with the archive, history and future society, and what they would make of our contemporary culture through the images that we leave behind.”

Pippa Hale, Founder and Director of the Northern Art Prize, said: “I’m delighted to see so many new names on the long list this year. Once again there’s a real diversity of media, career trajectories and of course ages – it’s great to see a wide range of artists from those in their 20s to 70s working with sound, paint, sculpture and digital technology.”

The longlist will be whittled down to four final nominees in September, and an exhibition of their work will be open at Leeds Art Gallery in March next year. The winner will be announced on 23 May.

Castlefield relaunch

Dave Griffiths will also be the centre of attention at the re-launch of the Castlefield Gallery, on August 10th, when two ambitious new works will be showcased.

The exhibition will feature the film Babel Fiche, which is also the name of the show, and Deep Field [The Photogenic Universe], in which Griffiths worked with an astrophysicist to sample a 10-degree field of view in the southerly sky, mapping far-flung galaxies within the specific spatial coordinates of Castlefield Gallery’s unique double-height space.