Friday 8 March 2024
Entries are now open for the 2024 Michèle Whitecliffe Art Writing Prize, presented by Auckland Art Gallery.
Awarded annually, the Prize seeks to foster vital debate about the visual arts of Aotearoa New Zealand. Each year a theme is set to prompt writers’ thinking. This year’s theme is Artificial intelligence (AI) and the visual arts.
Developed in 2021 by Auckland Art Gallery and Michèle Whitecliffe, the Prize was established in memory of her late husband, Greg Whitecliffe, who was passionate about writing and seeing the arts celebrated in print.
Tātaki Auckland Unlimited Director of Auckland Art Gallery, Kirsten Lacy says that the Prize encourages critical thinking and discourse about New Zealand art in relation with international art.
“The Prize provides a platform for diverse perspectives and experiences through the discussion of art. Diversity greatly influences how we interpret and appreciate art, so it’s important that we engage and support a range of views, including new voices.
“This year’s theme aims to explore the growing availability of AI technologies and its relationship to how we make and understand art,” says Lacy.
The Prize’s winner and runners-up will be chosen by this year’s international judge, Dr Mi You.
Dr Mi You is a professor of art and economies at the University of Kassel / documenta Institute. Her interests in politics around technology and futures has led her to work on ‘actionable speculations’, articulated in the exhibition Sci-(no)-Fi at the Academy of the Arts of the World, Cologne (2019).
The winner will receive $2500 and have their text published in the November 2024 of Auckland Art Gallery’s triannual magazine, Art Toi. The runners-up see their texts published on the Gallery’s website.
Any submitted text must be a work of non-fiction between 1500 and 3500 words in length, which addresses the theme and an element of the New Zealand visual arts, including painting, sculpture, carving, photography, printmaking, illustration, installation, weaving, ceramics and video/film.
Applications close Wednesday 31 July 2024.