SPIER CONTEMPORARY 2010 ENTRIES

SA’s biggest contemporary art competition and exhibition attracted a major number of entries.

Entry into the Spier Contemporary 2010 is now closed. South Africa’s biggest contemporary art competition and exhibition put the call out to artists who had until October 30, 2009, to submit contemporary works that expressed their current condition, observations, thoughts, fears and dreams. The only restriction to entry was that artists should be over 21 and living in South Africa.

Submissions took place at 13 selection centres across South Africa. Works were accepted throughout the week, with the greatest portion of work arriving in the last two days. Whilst the majority of entries came in to the major city centres, there was a major increase in outlying areas from the Spier Contemporary 2007/08. This was the result of a significant amount of developmental work that the Spier Contemporary project rolled out in these areas. There were just over 2,900 entries in total, which represented an increase of 30% from the previous exhibition.

Spier Contemporary 2010 Project Manager, Farzanah Badsha, said the process had been smooth and that there was, “a pleasant sense of achievement from the artists who submitted work.”

Badsha was unable to comment on the nature or standard of the work submitted as this will be the collective task of Spier Contemporary’s curatorial team. The five-member team will be travelling South Africa during November, appraising entries and selecting works from up to 100 artists for the Spier Contemporary 2010 Exhibition. The exhibition will open at the Cape Town City Hall in March 2010 and thereafter it will travel to Johannesburg and Durban.