Of the 20 qualified entries for the Purita Kalaw-Ledesma Prize for Art Criticism of the Ateneo Art Awards, 11 chose to dwell on the exhibit “Propaganda” curated by Ricky Francisco and Ethel Villafranca, which ran from Feb. 6 to May 30, 2015 at the Lopez Memorial Museum.
Four wrote on “Project Bakawan: Ethos, Pathos, Bathos” held at Vargas Museum 4, while a couple of entrants wrote on “Images of Nation: Cesar Legaspi,” exhibited at The Brave Modern, 3/F of Ayala Museum 2. The rest, one entry each, were on “Forces at Work” at Vargas Museum, “Paul Pfeiffer: Vitruvian Figure” at the Museum of Contemporary Art and Design, and “Graven Images: 1964-2014 — Pandy Aviado 50 Years of Printmaking.”
Philippine STAR Lifestyle Editor Millet Mananquil and I served as judges for the art criticism contest, together with the Awards founder and Ateneo Art Gallery director and chief curator Boots Herrera, art historian and independent curator Tony Godfrey, and visual artist, writer and independent curator Ringo Bunoan.
Each of us had received digital files of the exhibition notes (wall text and/or brochures) that accompanied each exhibit, as well as reviews published in dailies and online. Deliberations were held on June 11 at the KL (Kalaw-Ledesma) Foundation office, with the ever-gracious Ada Ledesma-Mabilangan hosting.
We settled for individual shortlists of four to six finalists, which eventually included the top prizewinner. Shortlisted were writer-entrants Paula Acuin, Ren Aguila, Paolo Tiausas and Mia Dagsaan.
Last Thursday, Sept. 18, the winner received her award at the Ateneo Art Awards rites held at the Grand Atrium of Shangri-La Plaza Mall, where the Fernando Zobel Prizes for Visual Arts were also given to three co-equal winners.
The winner of the Purita Kalaw-Ledesma Prize for Art Criticism was Paula Acuin, who wrote about the Cesar Legaspi show in Ayala Museum. Formerly the exhibitions manager of the Museum of Contemporary Art and Design at the College of St. Benilde-School of Design and Arts, she is now a Humanities teacher at San Beda College Las Piñas.
The Purita Kalaw-Ledesma Prize for Art Criticism, which is co-presented with The Philippine STAR, is only in its second year. Last year’s winner was Carlomar Daoana, who now writes regular art reviews for The STAR. Part of Paula Acuin’s prize is a similar engagement with regular space in this section.
The second half of the 2015 Ateneo Art Awards featured the 12th-year winners of the Fernando Zobel Prizes for Visual Arts. As Boots Herrera mentioned in her introductory speech, “These two programs were formally instituted under their present names last year with the permission of the heirs of Fernando Zobel and with the generous assistance from the trustees of the Kalaw-Ledesma Foundation Inc. through its president, Ada Ledesma-Mabilangan and Dr. Wally Ledesma.”
Among the guests last Thursday were Fr. Jose Ramon T. “Jett” Villarin, S.J., president of the Ateneo de Manila University; Her Excellency Kok Li Peng, Ambassador of Singapore to the Philippines; His Excellency Asif Ahmad, Ambassador of the United Kingdom to the Philippines; and Felicity Lee, First Secretary of the Australian Embassy.
The awards have also partnered with the Shangri-La Plaza Mall, which serves as a venue for a two-week exhibition of the finalists’ works, as well as Metro Society for publicity and promotions. The exhibition at the East Wing will run until today before it completes its three-month run at the Ateneo Art Gallery.
Jurors who screened the nominations and came up with the visual arts shortlist and winners included AdMU Fine Arts Program professor Fr. Rene Javellana, S.J.; College of St. Benilde’s Museum of Contemporary Art and Design (MCAD) director Joselina “Yeyey” Cruz; premier photographer and Ateneo Art Awards recipient Wawi Navarroza; art patron Dr. Rico Quimbo; Green Papaya Art Projects artist-founder Norberto “Peewee” Roldan; and foreign juror Neil Feitling, visual artist and director of the La Trobe Art Institute, Bendigo, Australia.
The 12 finalists were: Pio Abad, Catalina Africa, Charles Buenconsejo, Frank Callaghan, Buen Calubayan, Ian Carlo Jaucian, Lui Medina, Veronica Peralejo, Luis Santos, Maria Taniguchi, Derek Tumala and Ryan Villamael.
Shangri-la Plaza Mall’s executive vice-president Lala Fojas joined the jurors in presenting the three co-equal winners of the Fernando Zobel Prizes to Pio Abad (“The Collection of Jane Ryan and William Saunders”), Frank Callaghan (“Dead Ends”), and Ryan Villamael (“Isles”).
Artists’ residencies with international partners make the Ateneo Art Awards unique, providing opportunities for young artists below 36 years to expand networks and take on diverse creative paths. Together with the Ateneo Art Gallery, these international partners jointly fund the studio residency grants.
The Visual Arts Center at the La Trobe University in Australia, the Artesan Gallery + Studio in Singapore, and The Creative Campus at the Liverpool Hope University in Liverpool, United Kingdom all chose Ryan Villamael as their grants recipient. Villamael is a Laguna native who studied at the Philippine High School for the Arts before continuing at the University of the Philippines College of Fine Arts.
The partnership with La Trobe University has been the oldest, beginning in 2005. The Ateneo Art Gallery and La Trobe’s Visual Arts Centre continue to conduct exhibition exchange programs. In January 2016, the Ateneo Art Gallery will be hosting an exhibition of multi-media art, and in 2017, the institutions will jointly organize a reunion exhibition of past artist-residents to Australia in time for the Castlemaine Arts Festival held in the state of Victoria.