Max Mara Art Prize for Women
LAURE PROUVOST WINS THE FOURTH EDITION
Iwona Blazwick, OBE, Director of the Whitechapel Gallery and Chair of the jury announced Laure Prouvost as the 2011 winner of the Max Mara Art Prize for Women, at the Italian Embassy on 22 November 2011.
She was chosen from a distinguished shortlist of artists which included Spartacus Chetwynd, Christina Mackie, Avis Newman and Emily Wardill.
The Max Mara Art Prize for Women in collaboration with the Whitechapel Gallery celebrates the aesthetic and intellectual contribution that women artists bring to the contemporary art scene. The unique initiative set up to promote and nurture female artists based in the United Kingdom, enables artists to develop their potential with the gift of time and space. The winning artist is given the opportunity to create new works of art inspired by a six month residency in Italy. The resulting works are then shown in Britain and Italy.
The Judging panel for the fourth Max Mara Art Prize for Women was chaired by Iwona Blazwick and included Lisa Milroy, artist; Muriel Salem, collector; Amanda Wilkinson, gallerist; and Gilda Williams, critic and lecturer.
Laure Prouvost will embark on an all expenses paid six month residency that is divided between two different Italian institutions. The first part will be located at the British School in Rome; the second at the Pistoletto Foundation in Biella founded by the great Italian artist Michelangelo Pistoletto. The work that results from this commission will be exhibited at the Whitechapel Gallery in 2013 then at the Maramotti Collection in Reggio Emilia, Italy.
Laure Prouvost was born in 1978 in Croix-Lille, France; she graduated from Central Saint Martins in 2002 and was part of the Lux Artist Associate Programme. Prouvost lives and works in London, showing with the MOT Gallery in East London. Her work includes film, performance and installation. She has been part of group shows at Tate Britain, the ICA, Serpentine and BFI Galleries. She was awarded the EAST International Award in 2009 and a FLAMIN commission in 2011.
Iwona Blazwick, OBE, Director, Whitechapel Gallery and Chairwoman, Max Mara Art Prize for Women, said: ‘Prouvost’s gripping short films and intriguing environments unhinge the connection between language and comprehension to open out for us surreal horizons of meaning. It will be of immense interest to see how the literary, cinematic and visual cultures of Italy will impact on her work’.
The Maramotti family, owners of the Max Mara Fashion Group, are preeminent contemporary art collectors. The Max Mara Art Prize for Women in collaboration with the Whitechapel Gallery is the first time the fashion house has established an arts prize in the UK and reflects the company’s strong association with art and women.
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The Wonderer (Betty Drunk), 2011
Laure Prouvost
Selected solo exhibitions
2011
Frieze Projects, Frieze Art Fair, London / Laure Prouvost, IPS, Birmingham / Time Machine, Bookworks, Spike Island, Bristol / before, before. before it was, the title sequence, spinning before next, a squid, MOT International, London
2010
All These Things Think Link, Flat Time House, London / Art Now Lightbox, Tate Britain, London / Frieze Frame, Frieze Art Fair, London / Present Future, Artissima Art Fair, Torino
2009
Storeybored, After the Butcher, Berlin / Burrow Me, Lighthouse, Brighton
2008
You Are The Only One, Monika Bobinska Gallery, London
2007
The Unnamable, Lounge Gallery - LUX, London
It, Heat, Hit, 2010
The Wonderer (Betty Drunk), 2011