2014 Prudential Eye Awards winners announced

Over 500 nominations for the 2014 Prudential Eye Awards for Contemporary Asian Art came from 30 countries throughout greater Asia. The Awards celebrate and recognise artistic talent from greater Asia across digital/video, installation, painting, photography and sculpture, and offer a platform to showcase contemporary Asian artists.

On the 18 January, 2014 the winners of the 2014 Prudential Eye Awards for Contemporary Asian Art were announced at an awards ceremony at Suntec City, Singapore:

Ben Quilty (painting)
Ben Quilty was named as the overall winner for the Awards, receiving a further US$30,000 and a solo exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery, London, in the summer of 2014. His rich impasto paintings of bold and unsettling subjects explore the problematic relationship between the personal and the cultural.

Daniel Crooks (digital/video)
Daniel Crooks is a multidisciplinary artist whose videos and photographic projects manipulate the elements of digital video. Using a ‘slice’ of an image or frame of a video, Crooks stretches and distorts reality, making the image pause and warp. Cityscapes are presented as a mind altering experience through the passing of time, whilst transforming our perception of reality.

Jompet Kuswidananto (installation)
Indonesian artist Jompet Kuswidananto makes multimedia installations that often combine video, sound and mechanized elements. A self-taught artist who trained as a musician, Kuswidananto creates ghostly brigades of bodiless figures delineated only by empty pairs of boots and fragments of ceremonial military costumes. Objects such as drum kits periodically crack out a sharp, hollow percussion. His practice investigates the complex history of Indonesia reflecting the dramatic pace of cultural, social and political change that has engulfed their nation since the fall of the Suharto regime in 1998.

Trent Parke (photography)
During the early years of his career, Trent Parke worked as a press photojournalist before embarking on his creative photography practice. In 2003 and 2004 he documented his journey around Australia over a two-year period, examining ‘the current and changing state of the Australian nation,’ capturing the mood of a still young and emerging nation. His later series includes The Christmas Tree Bucket, Welcome to Nowhere and Please step quietly everyone can hear you, a behind-the-scenes documentary series from the Sydney Opera House which revealed Parke’s characteristic originality and imagination.

Seoung Wook Sim (sculpture)
Seoul-based artist Seoung Wook Sim describes landscapes, figures, natives, and constructions through his work. Wook Sim’s dark and sublime sculptures record unusual journeys to different domains and are detailed representations of a world created in his imagination

2014 Prudence Eye Awards for Contemporary Asian Art
Until February 5, 2014
Suntec City, Singapore

Image: Australian painter Ben Quilty, overall winner of the Prudential Eye Award for Contemporary Asian Art, at the awards ceremony in Singapore.