- BMO Financial Group announces one national winner and 12
regional winners for its 19th annual BMO 1st Art!
competition
- $15,000 awarded to the
national winner; $7,500 awarded to
each regional winner
- All selected works to be showcased in free virtual
exhibition hosted by The Art Museum at the University of Toronto from November 16 to December
8 at artmuseum.utoronto.ca
TORONTO, Sept. 27, 2021 /CNW/ - BMO Financial Group
today announced the winners of its 19th annual
BMO 1st Art! competition, celebrating outstanding
achievements in visual arts among undergraduate students from
across Canada. Selected from a
record-breaking pool of 336 submissions, each of the 12 regional
winners will receive a cash prize of $7,500 with $15,000
awarded to the national winner.
This year marks the first time in competition history that a
time-based media project has won the national prize. NSCAD graduate
Anna Kuelken's nationally winning
film submission Father Like Son takes an intimate look into
daily life on her small family farm in Alberta. As her young niece and nephew grow
and integrate into the farm, they are faced with difficult lessons
about empathy and where their food comes from.
The annual competition invites deans and instructors from 110
undergraduate art programs across Canada to nominate three students from each of
their studio specialties to submit a recent work. An esteemed panel
of jurors selected this year's winning works from a pool of a
record 336 submissions. Competition guidelines allow for
time-based media including video, film, audio, and computer
technologies, in addition to mediums of drawing, printmaking,
photography, painting, sculpture, glass, ceramics, textiles, mixed
media, and installation works.
Following the success of the competition's first-ever virtual
exhibition last year, BMO 1st Art! will once again host its annual
gallery exhibition through the University of
Toronto's Virtual Art Museum, artmuseum.utoronto.ca.
The exhibition will showcase all 13 winning works from
November 16 to December 8, 2021.
"BMO's commitment to Boldly Grow the Good in business and
life includes long-standing support for community arts, culture
and programs like the 1st Art! competition," said Cameron Fowler, Chief Strategy and Operations
Officer, BMO Financial Group. "We are thrilled to recognize this
year's impressive group of winners as some of the best and
brightest emerging artists across Canada. Having their achievement selected by
this respected jury of artists, curators and arts educators is an
immense achievement that we hope will bring a future of success in
the arts to these talented winners."
"With schools and art studios being shut down for the past
year, this year's winners had to overcome unprecedented
circumstances to excel at their craft," said Dawn Cain, Curator, BMO Art Collection. "We are
grateful for the opportunity to share their exceptional works
with fellow art lovers from coast to coast to coast in a virtual
exhibition format."
Full list of 2021 BMO 1st Art! winners:
National Winner
- Anna Kuelken, "Father Like
Son", NSCAD University (Nova
Scotia)
Regional Winners
- Kev Liang, "Jiā yóu",
University of Alberta (Alberta)
- Shannon Pahladsingh, "oh,
thank goodness", University of the Fraser Valley (British Columbia)
- Tayler Buss, "Rearview",
University of Manitoba (Manitoba)
- Alana Morouney, "I'll get you
next time/I keep letting you win so that I can hold your hand",
Mount Allison University (New Brunswick)
- Bethany MacKenzie, "What Will
the Worms Think of Me?", Grenfell
Campus, Memorial University of
Newfoundland (Newfoundland
and Labrador)
- Max TS. Yang, "A Family of III", NSCAD University
(Nova Scotia)
- Erin Faulks, "The
Pandemicock", Nunavut Arctic College (Nunavut)
- Allysha Jacque, "kâvunga",
York University (Ontario)
- Price, "Egg and Chain", Holland College (Prince Edward Island)
- Maggy Hamel-Metsos, "No Place
to Stand", Concordia University
(Quebec)
- Holly Aubichon, "Modern
Medicine", University of Regina
(Saskatchewan)
- Juliet Di Carlo, "Consume in
a way that makes it look Authentic", Yukon School of Visual
Arts (Yukon)
Other highlighted works include:
- "oh, thank goodness is a spoken word poem addressing
institutional covert racism and the artist's lived experiences of
exploitation, objectification and minimization as a queer,
nonbinary person of colour in a white workplace. Placing a
seemingly innocent sentence in this context, she asks if such
microaggressions can be labelled as "micro" when the experience for
Indigenous, Black, and people of colour is macro." (Shannon Pahladsingh, British Columbia winner)
- "Modern Medicine is an oil painting created as a means
for healing and to document and preserve the artist's paternal
Métis and Cree lineage, which was buried as a result of aggressive
assimilation and its aftermaths. The piece includes subtle
shifts in perspective and is dimly lit to suggest memory recall,
emotional stress, spiritual presence, ceremony, tenderness, and the
weight of intergenerational trauma." (Holly
Aubichon, Saskatchewan
winner)
- "Through photo, video, print, and mixed media, Jiā yόu
explores the generational, cultural and philosophical Chinese
expectation of continuing blood lineages and gaining prosperity,
juxtaposed with the artist's queer and diasporic identity."
(Kev Liang, Alberta Winner)
The 2021 Selection Committee:
- Anne-Marie St-Jean Aubre,
Curator of Contemporary Art, Musée d'art de Joliette
- Melanie Colosimo,
Director/Curator, Anna Leonowens Gallery Systems, NSCAD
University
- Francisco-Fernando Granados,
Artist and Educator
To view images of the winning works on BMO Financial Group's
website, please visit: 1stArt.bmo.com
To access the virtual exhibition beginning November 16, please visit:
artmuseum.utoronto.ca
About BMO Financial Group
Serving customers for 200
years and counting, BMO is a highly diversified financial services
provider - the 8th largest bank, by assets, in North America.
With total assets of $971 billion as of July 31,
2021, and a team of diverse and highly engaged employees, BMO
provides a broad range of personal and commercial banking, wealth
management and investment banking products and services to more
than 12 million customers and conducts business through three
operating groups: Personal and Commercial Banking, BMO Wealth
Management and BMO Capital Markets.
SOURCE BMO Financial Group