Deadline looms for Fox Open Art Competition

Sunday 19 August 2018

Calling all Jersey artists! If you have a creative streak and fancy winning up to £1,000 and the opportunity to be featured in an exhibition at Jersey Arts Centre, now's the chance.

The 2018 Fox Open Art Competition is open to entrants aged 12 years or over who live in the Channel Islands and will be judged by artist Jake Attree.

Sponsored by Fox International, the competition is now in its 35th year, and has featured local artists such as Jason Butler, Nicholas Romeril and Kevin Pallot.

Entrants may submit up to two works that have not previously been shown either at the Arts Centre or St. James Guernsey. Entry costs £5 or £1 for students. Jersey budding artists will have hand their entries in at the Arts Centre on Wednesday 12 and Thursday 13 September between 10:00 and 13:00 or 14:00 and 16:00.

Mark Blanchard, chairman of the Arts Centre Exhibitions Sub-Committee, explained that the entries can be anything except photography. "It has to be hand produced, not mechanically produced or enhanced by a machine," he said. "It has to be craft-based. We have had drawings, paintings, collages, embroidery, pieces of watercolour. It is very much mixed media!"

Pictured: ‘Part of the Ruins of St Mary’s Abbey, York, I’ one of Jake Attree's paintings.

Entries will be judged by Jake Attree, a painter based in Halifax, West Yorkshire. Attree is a figurative artist "in the sense that everything he paints is based on something he has observed and almost certainly drawn," the Arts Centre says. "No matter how far the paintings may depart from the subject that inspired them, they nevertheless are rooted in and dependent upon these initial observations."

Mr Blanchard said: "He is a really nice guy. He has been an eminent painter for a long time and does powerful paintings."

Following his judging stint, Mr Attree will be exhibiting his own work at the Berni Gallery from Monday 17 September to Saturday 13 October.

This year’s prizes total £2,000 and will be awarded to artists who, in the opinion of the judge, have produced the most original work of art. The overall winner will receive  £1,000, while a shareholders' prize of £400 and £600 will go to the winner of the Jock Russell Award for 12 to 18 year olds.

Mr Blanchard said that the competition aims to encourage the artistic production among amateur artists. "It is for people who are at the first stage of launching their artistic career. It is very important to us to encourage them. Anyone can take part, we have older participants who were just retired as well as A-level and GCSE students. In fact, your youngest winner ever was 15 and presented a piece of work he had produced for his GCSE.

"It's about producing a piece of work you are very proud of and that will attract the judge's eye."

Lead photo: Holly Smith