Northern Art Prize Winner Announced: Leo Fitzmaurice

Claire Brentnall

I set myself the admittedly reductive and clichéd challenge of describing each of the artists’ exhibited pieces in this year’s Northern Art Prize in one word. This is of course a pigeon-holing activity that artists, including myself, may find irritating and that viewers will undoubtedly debate, but none-the-less, the challenge had been set in my mind so I gave it a go. My results were as follows.

My initial reaction to the work of James Hugonin was to describe it as ‘clinical’. The scrupulously delicate and vividly colourful paintings were very impressive when considering the care and attention that would have been needed for their creation: these are paintings that have been made by combining a surgeon’s precision with the love of a parent for their child. However when it came down to personal taste, Hugonin’s abstract work was not my favourite.

With Liadin Cooke’s work, I was instantly reminded of Rebecca Warren’s 2006 Turner Prize entry Come, Helga: the beaten and moulded sculptures that just make you want to stick your hands in and squeeze! I therefore chose to describe Cooke’s work as being highly ‘visceral’, with objects reminiscing of their physical, fluid creation and hinting towards natural or bodily forms.

Richard Rigg’s art I enjoyed for its ‘playful’ nature: the lost functionality of the seats in Some Rest on Six Occasions and likewise with the negative imprint of Wall Hanging. These were objects that tempted and teased the viewer to recognise an everyday and familiar occupation that has somehow been disrupted. I also found Wall Hanging strangely beautiful, and thought of Duchamp’s Bottle Rack when considering whether this was Rigg’s intention.

It was the work of Leo Fitzmaurice that I struggled to label with a single adjective. I felt that Horizon was a novel concept, taking 19^th and 20^th century landscape paintings and placing them side by side to create a single, joined landscape. Similarly, the urban environment images were quite interesting yet had, I felt, a rather depressing quality when pictured opposite the idealistic, romantic landscape paintings. Perhaps this awkward meeting of opposites was Fitzmaurice’s intention; in which case, maybe a suitable adjective for his work would be ‘juxtaposing’.

Is it possible that my difficulty in ‘pigeon holing’ the work of Fitzmaurice tells the tale of an artist that is innovative and fresh? Perhaps it was this that won him first place at this year’s Northern Art Prize, and it is a title that I feel is well deserved. I would however, like to suggest Rigg as a close second for the crown, as it was through his work that I was able to consider a different kind of aesthetic ‘beauty’ to that found within a landscape painting.