Montreal artist Raphaëlle de Groot / photo Aleyah Solomon
This evening at the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art in Toronto, Montreal artist Raphaëlle de Groot was announced winner of the $50,000 Sobey Art Award.
She succeeded in a tight field of other finalists, including Gareth Moore, whose recent Karlsaue Park installation at dOCUMENTA (13) was well noted in the international press; Jason de Haan, who recently started an MFA at Bard College in upstate New York; Eleanor King, who wowed many Sobey exhibition viewers with her towering sculptures consisting of hundreds of vinyl records and dozens of drums; and Derek Sullivan, whose work is currently featured at the Canadian Biennial in Ottawa. Each of the runners-up this year also receive $5,000 in prize money.
The prize decision was made by the Sobey curatorial panel consisting of Art Gallery of Nova Scotia curator David Diviney, Galerie de l’UQAM director Louise Déry, MOCCA artistic director David Liss, Southern Alberta Art Gallery curator Ryan Doherty, and Vancouver Art Gallery senior curator Bruce Grenville.
In a statement, the panel praised de Groot’s tendency to work “outside of the conventional art world… Through her practice, we are called on to be active witnesses, intrigued by what we see, disturbed by what we discover of ourselves and by what is revealed to us in this encounter with art and the artist in the present.”
In 2008, de Groot was also a finalist for the Sobey Art Award; Tim Lee won that year. Her work has been included in the 2008 Quebec Triennial, the 2010 exhibition “Femmes artistes” at the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, and the 2012 exhibition “Archi-Féministes” at Centre Optica. She also won the 2006 Prix Pierre-Ayot and the 2011 Prix Graff.
The announcement of de Groot as winner of the 2012 prize makes her the fourth l’Université de Québec à Montréal alumnus to have won the award, which began in 2002. (The other UQAM-alumni winners were David Altmejd in 2009, Michel de Broin in 2007, and Jean-Pierre Gauthier in 2004.)
A 2012 Sobey Art Award shortlist exhibition will remain on view at MOCCA until December 30, 2012.
