UW News

April 20, 2011

Henry Art Gallery names winner of Brink Award for an emerging artist

UW News

The Henry Art Gallery has named Vancouver, B.C., artist Andrew Dadson the winner of The Brink award for 2011.

The Brink is a biennial award granted to an early-career artist working in Washington, Oregon, or British Columbia whose work shows artistic promise and who appears to be on “the brink” of a promising career. Dadson will receive a prize of $12,500 and be given a solo exhibition at the Henry. A work of his art will be acquired for the museums permanent collection.

Dadson creates paintings of intensely worked layers of oil paint, pushed unidirectionally across the painting’s support, allowing a thick blur to settle on the picture plane while excesses of color build up at the edges. Combining multiple canvases in small groups that often sit on the floor and lean on each other, he emphasizes the physicality of his process and the object-like nature of the results.

Says Dadson, “. . . everything has boundaries; the delimitations between such can be static and opaque or permeable and imagined. In my practice, I search for the spaces where society manifests these invisible distinctions, and how they can be indiscernibly breached and stretched.”

Dadson received a BFA from the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design. He is represented by Galleria Franco Noero (Turin, Italy). Dadson, many of the other short-listed nominees for the award and jurors will take part in a public program at 1 p.m. Sunday, June 26, at the Henry.

The artists will share images of their work, and members of The Brink selection committee will respond to their presentations. The event is intended to be an open-ended, free-wheeling discussion about contemporary art in this region, and will be an opportunity for dialogue between artists, arts professionals, collectors, and the general public.

For this years award, 62 nominations were received from arts professionals across the Pacific Northwest. Of those nominated, 43 artists submitted materials for consideration.

The award, now in its second biennial cycle, was established by long-time Henry Art Gallery benefactors and Seattle art supporters John and Shari Behnke, who said, “We hope this award will provide a compelling reason for artists to stay in the region.”