Yorkshire artist Margaret Harrison wins Northern Art Prize

MARGARET Harrison is this year’s winner of the Northern Art Prize - and the first Yorkshire-born artist to win the title.
Margaret Harrison. Picture: David LindsayMargaret Harrison. Picture: David Lindsay
Margaret Harrison. Picture: David Lindsay

The 72-year-old from Wakefield was at Leeds Art Gallery to accept her award - and £16,500 prize money.

She created a series of work entitled ‘Reflect’ especially for the Leeds-based competition founded in 2007.

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Her installation brings together sculpture, painting and drawings and is on display at the gallery in The Headrow until June 16.

The NAP is only open to artists who are based in the North - and unlike the Turner Prize - it has no upper age limit.

The other shortlisted artists - Rosalind Nashashibi, Emily Speed and duo Joanne Tatham & Tom O’Sullivan - who work is also on show got

£1,500 each.

Margaret’s work was picked out by a judging panel of James Lingwood (Co-Director, Artangel), Jennifer Higgie (Co-Editor, Frieze), Margot

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Heller (Director, South London Gallery), Tomma Abts (Artist) and Sarah Brown who is Curator of Exhibitions at Leeds Art Gallery.

The panel said: “The judges acknowledge the challenge involved in considering artists at very different stages in their careers.

“After much deliberation, we have decided to award the Northern Art Prize 2013 to Margaret Harrison for vital new work that reflects on

her 50 year career at the front line of art and activism.”

Margaret’s work included The Last Gaze, a new painting based upon The Lady of Shalott oil painting by John William Waterhouse (1894) which hangs at Leeds Art Gallery.

It interprets the poem by Alfred Lord Tennison that tells of a cursed woman who can only view the world via mirrored images.

Admission to the show is free.

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