Now in its third year, the Latitude Contemporary Art (LCA) Award and Exhibition is one of the most exciting strands of Latitude’s eclectic arts line-up. Boasting one of the largest contemporary art prize funds in the country, a shortlist of five exciting British artists have been selected and commissioned to compete for the £10,000 prize and an invitation to return in 2013 with a challenging new art work.  

The final pieces of art will be exhibited within the Iris Gallery, a dedicated woodland site at the heart of the festival. The exhibition is produced by Lavish Design, who specialise in the design and production of spectacular bespoke performances and cutting edge music and art production.

The LCA is curated by Melvin Benn, Founder and Creator of Latitude and Managing Director of Festival Republic, Ben Borthwick, CEO of Artes Mundi, Ami Jade Cadillac, Managing Director of Lavish Design, freelance arts critic Louise Gray, and Anne Hilde Neset, Artistic Director at Ny Musikk and Contributing Editor at The Wire.  Confirmed judges for this year are Melvin Benn, Lizzie Carey-Thomas, Curator of Contemporary British Art at Tate Britain, and BBC broadcaster, journalist and The Review Show presenter, Martha Kearney.  Further judges to be confirmed.

This year’s commissioned artists have been handpicked by the curators for their innovative and challenging conceptual portfolios, representing some of the most exciting and fresh new talent working in the professional contemporary art world today. They are:  Linder Sterling, Tom Dale, George Young, Lisa Peachey and Andy Holden. Last year’s winning artist Andy Harper also returns with a new installation, yet to be revealed.  

Alongside creating artworks for the festival, the artists will also take part in a number of Q&A sessions in front of a festival audience. The Lavish Lounge, a special area dedicated to the LCA will run a number of intimate staged discussions between the curators and the commissioned artists, called ‘In conversation with artists.’

THE SHORTLIST

LINDER STERLING
Linder’s work is considered to be the 1970’s equivalent of Hannah Höch or John Heartfield. Her collage pictures, which juxtapose images from consumer and porn magazines, were seminal in their use by bands Buzzcocks and Magazine for their record artwork. Her latest solo exhibitions include Linder at Stuart Shave/Modern Art (2011), and performances of The Darktown Cakewalk: Celebrated from the House of FAME at The Arches in Glasgow and at London’s Chisenhale Gallery (2010). Linder’s film Forgetful Green, which features characters from her performance shows, was commissioned for Frieze Film in 2010.

GEORGE YOUNG
Shortlisted for the Jerwood Drawing Prize in 2010, recent solo exhibitions include Hilary Crisp Gallery, London (2012), Hilary Crisp Gallery, London and WE-Project Gallery, Brussels (2010). 2011 group exhibitions included Momentum 2011, 6th Nordic Biennial of Contemporary Art, Moss, Norway, Portrait of ambiguity, Razvan Boar, Christian Schoeler, Alexander Tinei, George Young, Ana Cristea Gallery, New York and The Shape We’re In, Zabludowicz Collection, London. George’s work incorporates painting and sculpture into mixed media installations.

LISA PEACHEY
In 2008 Lisa was shortlisted for the MaxMara art prize, in association with the Whitechapel Art Gallery. She has also curated projects, including ‘In its wake’, at Elevator Gallery, London, and has written texts for Moot, Nottingham and Site Gallery, Sheffield. She studied at De Montfort University, Leicester (1996), and the Slade School of Art, UCL, London (2006). Previous exhibitions include Small is beautiful, Flowers Central, London (2011), Abort, Retry, Fail?, South Square Gallery, Bradford (2011), Artist of the day, Flowers Central, London (2011), Site Unseen, Brick Lane Gallery, London (2011), and the Jerwood Drawing Prize, London (2006) Current influences include the paintings of Hammershøi and Morandi, Michael Craig Martin’s ‘An Oak Tree’, ‘The Tears of Things’ by Peter Schwenger and the Princess and the Pea. Lisa’s work explores the idea and value of making through historical and artisan techniques.

TOM DALE
Tom was recently named the Guardian newspaper’s ‘Artist of the Week’ with writing about his work appearing in Flash Art, Art Review, Time Out, and Dazed & Confused. In 2008 he was a recipient of an ACE grant for the arts, supporting his first international solo exhibition at the CCA Warsaw and subsequent publication. A Graduate of the Goldsmiths Fine Art MA course in 2006, he currently holds a doctoral research position at Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge. Tom takes the familiar and makes it strange. The work for him is the consequence of these actions. Making work that forces an interpretation as well as a consciousness of that process is one of the principal motivations of his practice. His, is an art of excess carried out with formal restrain.

ANDY HOLDEN
Andy won the Slade School of Fine Art Boise Travel Scholarship in 2008 and a Grant for the Arts from Arts Council. He also became a Stanley Picker Fellowship member at Kingston University in 2011. Recent solo exhibitions include The Dan Cox Library for the Unfinished Concept of Thingly Time, Cubitt , Stalagmite Rock Club, Art Rotterdam (2012), Cookham Erratics, Bristol, Chewy Cosmos Thingly Time, Kettle's Yard Cambridge, Cookham Erratic, Benaki Museum, Athens (2011) and Art Now: Andy Holden, TATE Britain (2010). His work expresses recurring themes of memory and attachment to objects.

2011 Latitude Contemporary Art Prize Winner: ANDY HARPER
 Of his 2011 Latitude Contemporary Art Prize winning piece, An Orrery for Other Worlds, Andy says “Since 2005 I have made a number of works under the same title, An Orrery for Other Worlds. These works are mostly spherical in shape, painted with oil paint and hung in non-art spaces; a disused factory or a deconsecrated church. I have had an idea to display one of these works outside for some time and the woodland setting of Latitude seemed like the ideal opportunity.” Andy’s work, very much of the present, is also one firmly rooted in the history of ideas and of art. His Orrery series is part painting, part sculpture: they have an enormous presence.

Lavish - The Big Screen In the Woods
Alongside the art installations that will be exhibited in the Iris Gallery, Lavish will produce a separate artists’ film and live art DJ programme at The Big Screen In the Woods. Curated by Louise Colbourne, assistant curators Paul Burgess & Jim Hobbs with Harry K arranging the art DJ programme, a dynamic art theme will be presented for each day of the festival.  Friday night is ‘Art Cut-Up’ a collage, montage and art mash-up, Saturday night is ‘Out of This World with surreal and abstract art and Sunday is ‘Art Shebeen’ with art related to music films and cult imagery. Artists whose work will appear on The Big Screen include: Brunuel, Oliver Bancroft, Tracey Emin, Laura Provost, Stan Brackage, Len Lye, Semiconductor, Kevin Gaffney, Saskia Olde Volbers, Emma Hart, Ian Helliwell, Tim Simmons, Luke Losey, Squint, Jayne Parker, Zoe Brown, Don Letts, Paul Burgess,  David Blandy, Malcolm Le Grice, Jeff Keen, Mark Prendergast and Philip Hausmeir. There will also be live late night art DJ & VJ sets to accompany the film programme every night from artists Harry K, Don Letts, Mordant Music, David Wilson, People Like Us and Jonny Trunk.

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds Commissioned Shorts
The Big Screen will also show: Iain Forsyth & Jane Pollard’s selection of 14 short films commissioned by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds. These films feature current and former Bad Seeds and other participants include Flood, John Hillcoat, Bobby Gillespie, Bleddyn Butcher and Polly Borland, Alan Vega, Simon Reynolds, Nick Zinner, Dave Gahan and Martin Gore, Matt Snow Mark Arm, Martin Creed, Daniel Miller, Mick Turner and Noah Taylor.