The inaugural Cord Prize – Contemporary art photography

 

 

deadline 9th June   The Cord Prize, is a new international contemporary art award established to support and acknowledge the practice of early and mid-career visual artists. The award comprises an individual first prize of $10,000, second prize of $1,000, and third prize of $500. Additionally, twenty-two artists will be selected for online exhibition and a piece of writing will be commissioned from the award jurors.     The inaugural Cord Prize – Contemporary art photography   Photography has become a universally accepted, unchallenged, medium of contemporary art. Concomitantly, photography’s capacity to influence our everyday lives has become exponentially important with the ubiquity of visual social media and the opening up of the possibilities for us to communicate and disseminate our photographic images independently of institutional support. It could be said that the ubiquity which photography has achieved, its establishment in the contemporary art canon, is both a blessing and a problem – marking a new beginning, a place to start from all over again, yet more challenging than ever to make meaningful photographic work that resonates in cultural spaces and will endure. The inaugural Cord Prize invites early and mid-career artists who are working within the field of photography to apply.     The brief   Against this setting, applicants to the inaugural prize are invited to submit up to 16 images of current work from a wholly or partially photo-based practice, using any photographic process or medium. Applications should be accompanied by a resume, and text of up to 400 words detailing the artist's research and practice. Applicants may also wish to contextualise their work within what they see as the significant cultural issues at play within contemporary art photography.   Submissions close at midnight (GMT) on 9th June 2013.     Jurors     We are extremely pleased and excited to announce the jurors for this first edition of the award are the hugely respected and admired curators and writers Diana Edkins and Charlotte Cotton.   The jurors’ selection will be announced approximately two weeks after the deadline.     About   The Cord Prize, established by UK games industry veteran EA Lindsay, will be followed later in the year by the launch of CordContemporary, an online only gallery, presenting a portfolio of invited artists, partially selected from submissions to the various editions of the award. The ambition of CordContemporary is to establish the online gallery, with a programme of exhibitions supported by critical writing and serious curatorial practice, as a viable cultural presence; and a place to look forward to visiting as one would a physical gallery.   The Cord Prize will be awarded twice-annually, alternating focus on specific disciplines, with curated themes and critical surveys; and with photo-based practice as a recurring thread.     Supported by