ARTS PRIZE WINNERS ANNOUNCED

Montreal artist Francoise Sullivan has won the 2008 Gershon Iskowitz Prize, worth over twenty thousand dollars, for her contributions to the visual arts in Canada, according to the Canadian Press. The prize is sponsored by the Gershon Iskowitz Foundation and the Art Gallery of Ontario, which has four of Sullivan’s works in its permanent collection. In addition to the cash award, her work will be featured in a temporary exhibition at the gallery in 2009. Sullivan, born in Montreal in 1925, is “an inventive artist whose work has unfolded over six decades, linking modern and contemporary sensibilities in painting, dance, sculpture, and photography,” said David Moos, the gallery’s curator of contemporary art and a member of the jury that selected Sullivan for the prize. In 2001, Sullivan was named a member of the Order of Canada, and in 2005 she won the Governor General’s Award in the Visual and Media Arts.

In other news, artist Shane Cotton is a recipient of New Zealand’s 2008 Arts Foundation Laureate Award, reports the Manawatu Standard. The prestigious art award comes with a cash prize of around thirty thousand dollars—great news, Cotton said yesterday, in what has been a tough year for artists. He said he was “absolutely surprised” about the award, conferred on a select group each year. Other recipients of this year’s awards were costume designer Ngila Dickson, actor George Henare, writer Lloyd Jones, and baritone Teddy Tahu Rhodes.