Red Deer ceramics and social practice artist Robin Lambert won the popular vote to triumph at the 4th annual RBC Emerging Artist People’s Choice Award last week. He took home a $10,000 prize.
The prize ceremony, and related exhibition, took place at the Gardiner Museum in Toronto. Lambert’s work there, titled I Should Like to Give You a Kiss, invited visitors to take home objects from the display.
As Gardiner chief curator Rachel Gotlieb noted in a release, “Lambert’s work very much reflects key issues in current artistic practice: the social turn—that is engaging visitors within the museum—and represents post craft and post disciplinary conditions.”
Born on the Sunshine Coast of British Columbia, Lambert spent his childhood travelling throughout Western Canada before his family eventually settled in Northern Alberta. Later, he earned a BFA from Alberta College of Art and Design and an MFA from the University of Regina. His projects and exhibitions have been shown in Canada, the United States and Australia. Lambert’s theoretical and studio research interests include: social practice, participatory work, art and craft theory, craft culture and, the role of both the artist and the art object in and out of the gallery.
“My ceramic practice is dynamic and non-traditional,” Lambert said in a release, “though it references and respects the traditions of the material and culture of ceramics. I work specifically with the relationship between the ceramic object and the audience with a focus on the interstices between object and owner. My practice fits perfectly in the small space between social practice, performance, and ceramics with the ceramic part of this equation driving most every artistic inclination that I have. The inspirations for my work and the themes I work within come from all aspects of my life—art, literature, movies, pop culture, personal relationships and observations of daily life. My practice is a multidisciplinary investigation into the need to connect, to belong, and to be a part of a larger social or cultural system.
The RBC Emerging Artist People’s Choice Award, voted on by the general public, honours a Canadian artist (or permanent resident) who has been out of school and practicing professionally with clay as part of his/her artist practice for seven years or less.
The four other artists shortlisted for the award this year were Zimra Beiner, Jess Riva Cooper, David R. Harper, Robin Lambert and Jordan McDonald. To see images of all the finalists’ work, view our related slideshow.
