Tuesday, July 14, 2015

Archibald Prize

The CoUNTess email alert has been singing a questioning tune the last two days since the Archibald Portrait Prize finalists have been announced.  "Is CoUNTess counting the Archibald?" they have asked.  OMG is it that time of year again? The auditor has crunched the numbers from the last 10 years to share with you.

The question is - how many women artists have applied? We have requested these statistics from Art Gallery of New South Wales and hope to get an answer from them soon. We'll keep you posted.


4 comments:

Deepwarren said...

It's interesting - i just had a look at the Salon Refuse list, and their Archibald is 1:4, and the Wynn selection is 1:9 favouring the men. And where are the female sculptors?

Mars Drum said...

I'm finding males to be the overall 2015 art prize winners from more than just a casual glance. And by single gender judging panels at times...which seems like a silly thing. Paddington Art prize just had three blokes award $25000 to a male painter who painted in a similar vein to one of the judges. I was a finalist at the incinerator Art for Social Change prize last month...three female judges awarded first prize to a male artist, Ash Keating, who entered a 2009 documentation video of an art project commissioned by the City of Sydney and funded also by Australia Council. Here's a few more 2015 prize winners...it's worth some research methinks, I'm willing to track down this trend this year...sign of the times:
3. Guan Wei, winner of the 2015 Arthur Guy Memorial Painting Prize.
4. Alan Jones, winner ‘Mosman Council Major Prize’ 2015
5. The Winner of the Prestigious DOUG MORAN NATIONAL PORTRAIT PRIZE is Warren Crossett. 6. The Winner of the MORAN CONTEMPORARY PHOTOGRAPHIC PRIZE is Trent Mitchell for his photo Boy in Boat,2015.
7.$50,000 Lester Group Prize Winner Artist Marcus Callum. (This is a big one, won by blokes most years)
8. Joseph McGlennon won the $25000 2015 Bowness award.

I'll do a proper follow-up of this 2015 prize year...that's if you havent kept tabs yourself. At least the Archibald has a balance, I saw from your blog.
This is not about sour grapes. This is about the white privileged Aussie male not even noticing what's happening, because it is not on their agenda at all, as it is on mine. And I'm wondering why I bother spending $50 to enter each art prize when the chances are so low for females in this backward country. The other study i would like to do is who is winning the People's Choice awards: females or males?

Unknown said...

I asked the AGNSW for the numbers for the Archibald, and much to my surprise - women were not applying. For 2015:
"There were 831 Archibald entries of which 378 were women; and 652 Wynne entries of which 276 were women this year".
So women are actually over represented accorded to the odds. Moral of the story - enter :)

Mars Drum said...

Thanks for that. I will enter also. And I'll share this news around my female artist friends. Best wishes.