Does being a multi-finalist improve the name recognition of the artists?

This question goes hand-in-hand with another important question: “Why does Art Prizes aggregate and publish lists like this?”

And to my mind, this raises another question:

Q: Does being a multi-finalist improve the name recognition of the artists?

A: Not if no one knows.

That's why we are adding more information to our art-prizes.com website.

Talking to curators and visual arts journalists on several occasions about successful finalists, I was surprised that there was no name recognition of these artists. Despite the success of the artists in the world of art prizes, it didn’t appear to have registered with the establishment—the world of professional curators and writers, whose job it is to surface artists' names to the public (I’ll call them “influencers” from here on).

This failure by the establishment to promote wider recognition is why we produce these lists—not to rank artists but to inform the public, beginning with our 9,000+ subscribers, and to improve name recognition among artists of successful prize finalists.

While there are many prizes hosted by public galleries, what attention do their curators pay to the selection of finalists or winners at other galleries? There is almost no chance that influencers are aware of what is happening among the 200 or so art prizes held annually.

It would seem that the outcome of the apparent disconnect between prize outcomes and influencers is that winning multiple prizes, or being a frequent prize finalist, is not a pathway to being considered for inclusion in curated exhibitions. An individual’s success in art prizes is like a footnote in history, whereas an artist with a good relationship with an influencer is likely to enjoy multiple opportunities to be exhibited by public galleries.

Why is this? I am inclined to speculate that influencers in public galleries generally select artists who conform to a template, reducing their choices to a very limited pool of practitioners who conform to their critical point of view. This is why the same artists appear in public collections and exhibitions year after year, while many accomplished and professional artists don’t get a look in with public gallery exhibitions and collections. Their work falls outside the narrow curatorial purview.

In the past, dismissal of the outcomes of art prizes around Australia by our cultural influencers was no doubt due to the old “tea and lamington” style art prizes that graced halls and galleries of country towns of yesteryear. Many art prizes are now sophisticated and serious events, with professional managers, experienced volunteers they can call on, and good prize monies ($30,000 for a winning entry is not unusual).

Not being an artist, I don't have a horse in this race. It is just very weird that we have two phenomena in the Australian visual arts:

• The same list of influencer favourited artists keep being paraded by public galleries into templated exhibitions.
• Consolidated prize results don’t appear to resonate with influencers or art journals.

Art prizes are an important component of our cultural landscape that bring energy and creativity to the Australian visual arts and, in particular, regional centres. The artists who win prizes and have success in being selected as finalists deserve wider recognition and attention.

For all these reasons, and more, we have chosen to expand our website’s coverage of Calls and outcomes.

What do you think?