Museum PR Announcements News and Information

Art Gallery of Nova Scotia Announces Daniel Young and Christian Giroux as Winners of the 2011 Sobey Art Award

The Curatorial Panel for the 2011 Sobey Art Award announced today that Young & Giroux representing Ontario are the recipients of the $50,000 top prize. The announcement was made during a Gala event held at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia in Halifax. The Award was presented to the winning artists by the 2010 Sobey winner, Daniel Barrow and award-winning author and famed New Yorker contributor and art critic Adam Gopnik.


Daniel Young and Christian Giroux,35mm colour motion picture film, no sound 9min, looping film installation 
2010.

The other shortlisted artists for this year’s Award were:
• Charles Stankievech (West Coast and Yukon);
• Sarah Anne Johnson (Prairies and the North);
• Manon De Pauw (Québec)
• Zeke Moores (Atlantic).

Each of these outstanding artists receives $5,000 in prize money from the Sobey Art Foundation.

In commenting on Young & Giroux’s achievement, the Curatorial Panel said:
“Young & Giroux reflect a curious world where digital interfaces have become an inextricable part of our lives. Their collaborative practice seamlessly integrates works as diverse as architectural proposals for public spaces, typological films of infrastructure developments across Canada and re-tooled, pre-fabricated consumer goods. Their adaption of computer systems, logic and software embodies a language with which they investigate our more analogue tendencies, our affection for material, formal elements, space and our relationship with the lingering legacy of Modernism.”

Daniel Young and Christian Giroux have been making art together since 2002. They produce sculpture, public art and film installations. Their work is the product of an ongoing conversation concerning the modernity of the mid-century, the production of space and the built environment. Young and Giroux rework modernist forms of abstraction using consumer goods and industrial prototyping methods, construction systems and componentry to produce sculptural objects that partake in contemporary architectural discourse. Their film works constitute a form of research on sculptural form in the built environment from the architectural to the domestic scale. Their work has been shown at Scope Miami Beach (2004), Ace Art Inc (Winnipeg, 2004); the Power Plant (Toronto, 2006); the ExiS festival (Seoul, 2009); and The Museum Fur Kunst and Gewerbe Hamburg (2009). Their film installation 50 Light Fixtures from Home Depot has been exhibited at Mercer Union, Toronto (2010), and the Akademie der Kunst through Forum Expanded, of the Berlinale, Berlin (2010), and they are currently featured in a solo show at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal. They are represented by Diaz Contemporary in Toronto. Christian teaches at the School of Fine Art and Music at the University of Guelph.

The 2011 Sobey Art Award Curatorial Panel consists of:
• Mary Bradshaw, Gallery Director, Yukon Arts Centre;
• Ryan Doherty, Curator, Southern Alberta Art Gallery;
• Marnie Fleming, Curator of Contemporary Art, Oakville Art Galleries;
• Gaëtane Verna, Director and Chief Curator, Musée d’art de Joliette;
• Bruce Johnson, Curator of The Rooms Provincial Art Gallery.

Since its inception, the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia has organized and administered the Sobey Art Award and its accompanying exhibition. Every other year, the Award travels to a gallery or museum outside of Halifax. The 2011 Sobey Art Award shortlist exhibition is on view at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia until January 8, 2012. www.artgalleryofnovascotia.ca

Leave a comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *