Max Mara Art Prize for Women
THIRD EDITION WINNER IS ANNOUNCED
The winner of the third edition of the Max Mara Art Prize for Women was announced at the Londons’ Whitechapel Gallery on 23 March 2010.
The judging panel, of which Iwona Blazwick is Chairwoman, included artist Fiona Banner, gallerist Alison Jacques, art collector Valeria Napoleone and art critic Polly Staple; they selected the shortlisted artists (Becky Beasley, Andrea Büttner e Elizabeth Price) and, after having considered their proposals, announced Andrea Büttner as winner of the Prize.
As Iwona Blazwick’s words synthesize well: “The calibre of work being produced by female artists working in the UK at the moment is incredible, but Andrea’s fascinating practice, which draws parallels between the rituals of religious belief and of making art, won the judges over. It is absolutely of the moment; the range of media she uses references art from German Expressionist woodcuts to photography.”
The Max Mara Art Prize for Women is a unique initiative set up to promote and nurture female artists based in the United Kingdom, enabling artists to develop their potential through the conception of a new work. The prize offers a 6-months residency in Italy: the artist will be at the American Academy in Rome from 26 April 2010 and then she will move to the Pistoletto Foundation in Biella.
Andrea Büttner’s work explores the area between religion, art and the position of the artist in the art world. She engages with Catholicism in a complex multi-layered way to think about art. The artist herself declared that she will widen these interests during her residency, focusing on researching ideas of poverty in both Franciscan theology, together with notions of poverty in Arte Povera. Her interests lie in how poverty implies a state of shame but Büttner would like to explore how poverty is shifted to a positive and productive position in these concepts. The artist will create a new body of work that will potentially include drawing, sculpture and a series of large scale woodcut print. She also intends to find a new community, local to Rome, to collaborate with.
The work will then be offered to the Collezione Maramotti for acquisition and presented at the Whitechapel Gallery in an exhibition in Spring 2011.
THE WINNER
Andrea Büttner
Born in Stuttgart in 1972. Lives and works in London.
She works in a variety of media, sometimes using old-fashioned items such as woodcuts and pressed flowers, and is especially interested in the area where art and religion overlap.
For 2 years the artist spent time with a group of Carmelite nuns in a convent in West London, making pencil sketches of the nuns at prayer. Büttner gave one of the sisters a handheld camera and asked her to record the making of their small hand-crafted offerings, ranging from crochet baskets to religious icons. The resulting video Little Works (2007) documents the nun’s thanksgiving through craft and presents a wistful image of a creative process untouched by the secular age.
Büttner’s work also investigates the potential dilemmas facing the artist in the expectant space of the gallery. In her 16mm film titled I feel shame / we feel shame / I feel shame (2008), Büttner and a second figure make declarations of timidity and shame. Composed of three simultaneous projections, the artist draws attention to the symbolic location of the art gallery and the pressures on the artist that this entails.
After her studies in History and Philosophy at the Berlin’s Humboldt University, she achieves a PhD at the Royal College in London in 2009. She already received many recognitions: Maria-Sibylla-Merian Prize and Kunststiftung Baden-Württemberg Grant (2009), Cusanuswerk Scholarship (2005-8), Working Grant, Tyler Graphics (2006).
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Andrea Büttner
Nativity, 2007
Her latest shows
2009
The Young People visiting our ruins see nothing but a style, Galleria Civica di Arte Moderna, Turin
2008
Nought to Sixty, ICA, London
Andrea Büttner, Hollybush Gardens, London
2007
On the spot #1 – Andrea Büttner, Badischer Kunstverein, Karlsruhe
Pensée Sauvage, Frankfurter Kunstverein, Frankfurt
2006
Happy Believers, 7 Werkleitz Biennale, Halle
Anxiety of Influence, The New Wight Biennial, UCLA, Los Angeles
Bloomberg New Contemporaries, The Coach Shed, Liverpool
Biennial, Liverpool