$100,000 Audain Prize awarded to Vancouver artist Rebecca Belmore

Vancouver and Toronto-based artist Rebecca Belmore has been awarded the $100,000 Audain Prize for the Visual Arts it was announced Tuesday.

A member of the Lac Seul First Nation (Anishinaabe), Belmore is an internationally recognized multidisciplinary artist whose work has, for decades, turned a lens on Indigenous communities.

“We who work in the fields of art believe in its greatness,” said Belmore in a statement. “Michael Audain’s ongoing generosity and support for the arts across Canada and commitment to Indigenous art is commendable. I thank him for this.”

Selected by an independent panel of jurors, the annual Audain Prize celebrates outstanding achievements of B.C.’s artists and is administered by the Audain Art Museum.

“It is wonderful to recognize Rebecca Belmore as the recipient of the 2024 Audain Prize for the Visual Arts,” said Michael Audain, chairman of the Audain Foundation in a statement. “As a province, we have some of the leading contemporary artists in the world, and it is our privilege to celebrate their work at home in British Columbia. Rebecca Belmore’s work has had a pronounced influence in the visual arts, and across the broader social landscape.”

In 2023, Belmore, commissioned by the Polygon Gallery, in collaboration with the Burrard Arts Foundation, created the public artwork Hacer Memoria in North Vancouver. The artwork, a series of blue and orange shirts made of tarpaulin, pointed to the resilience of residential school survivors while offering the public a chance to reflect on and acknowledge Indigenous people.

Belmore’s recent solo exhibitions resume includes Turbulent Water at Griffith University in Brisbane, Australia (2021); Reservoir at the Audain Art Museum in Whistler (2019); and Facing the Monumental at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto (2018).

Belmore has participated in a number of international group exhibitions, including the Whitney Biennial (2022); Istanbul Biennial (2019); documenta 14 (2017); and the Venice Biennale (2005).

She also was part of aabaakwad, an Indigenous-led gathering of the visual arts community that was presented at the Venice Biennale in 2022.

In addition to the $100,000 prize, five $7,500 travel grants for B.C. students in university-level visual arts programs were also awarded today. Recipients include: Simon Fraser University’s Avideh Saadatpajouh; the University of B.C. Okanagan’s Roland Samuel; UBC’s Yuan Wen; the University of Victoria’s Rainy Huang; and Emily Carr University of Art + Design’s Sun S. Manuel.

Established in 2004, the Audain Prize has honoured some of B.C.’s most influential artists. Past recipients include Dana Claxton, Ian Wallace, James Hart, Stan Douglas, Susan Point, Carole Itter, Paul Wong, Michael Morris, Fred Herzog, Takao Tanabe, Gathie Falk, Marian Penner Bancroft, Rodney Graham, Robert Davidson, Liz Magor, Jeff Wall, Gordon Smith, Eric Metcalfe, E.J. Hughes and Ann Kipling.

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