LONDON.- Last week saw the announcement of the six regional arts organisations across the UK which have been shortlisted for the annual £100,000 Freelands Award. The Award was established in 2016 by Freelands Foundation Chair and Founder, Elisabeth Murdoch. It aims to raise the profile of mid-career female artists and support the work of visual arts organisations outside London.

The third year nominations are:

• BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead
• Dundee Contemporary Arts, Dundee
• Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge
• Metropolitan Arts Centre, Belfast
• Spike Island, Bristol
• Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Wakefield

The winning organisation and selected mid-career female artist will be announced in autumn 2018.

The selection panel for the 2018 Award winner are as follows: Elisabeth Murdoch (Chair); Martin Clark, Director, Camden Arts Centre; Susan Hiller, Artist; Jenni Lomax, Outgoing Director for Camden Arts Centre; and Beatrix Ruf, Curator and former Director of Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam.

The total value of the Award is £100,000, of which £25,000 is to be paid directly by the winning organization to the artist they select to work with. The Award is about pushing boundaries and realising projects which an organisation could not bring to fruition without this funding opportunity. The organisation’s engagement with the selected artist will support her to create ambitious new work and to receive increasing professional recognition.

Now in its third cycle, the first Freelands Award supported Glasgow-based artist, Jacqualine Donachie’s 2017 exhibition at The Fruitmarket Gallery and the second winner, Nottingham Contemporary and filmmaker Lis Rhodes, whose solo exhibition will be on display from June 2019 – September 2019.

The Award’s priorities are to support projects that will enable artists to fulfill their creative aspirations, produce exceptional work, and in turn support the regional arts organisation that will exhibit this work and bring it to public attention.

Alongside the Freelands Award shortlist announcement, the Foundation commissions an independent annual research report investigating the representation of female artists in Britain. This year’s research was carried out by Marijke Steedman. These reports are important as a reliable, public source of evidence for the arts community to highlight the issue of representation.

This year’s report reveals that while female students enrolled in creative arts and design courses continue to outnumber men, men outnumber women in the majority of activities that signify the development of an artist’s career, such as having a solo exhibition at a national gallery in London or having commercial gallery representation. In 2017 just 22% of solo shows presented by major London non-commercial galleries were by women artists and this figure has reduced since 2016.

“It is clear that women are striving to achieve the usual indicators of success by entering art competitions, applying for funding and embarking on postgraduate education.

This appears to pay-off in certain areas. Most notably the percentage of women representing Britain at the Venice Biennale and winning the Turner Prize over the last ten years has improved. 50% of artists selected for New Contemporaries were female and 47% of artists commissioned for latest editions of Liverpool Biennial, Folkestone Triennial and Glasgow International were women.

However, this report reveals inequality in the commercial sector. 28% of artists represented by London’s major commercial galleries in 2017 were women, representing a fall since 2016. Only 3% of auction lots in the top ten highest-grossing sales of each of the Sotheby’s Contemporary Art Evening Sales in 2017 were by women artists. These grim statistics indicate that women continue to be excluded from the mainstream commercial art market despite their best efforts to participate.” – Marijke Steedman

The full 2018 report is available here.