Eyes on the prize

Cork will celebrate a significant first next month when an art exhibition travels south for the first time.

The Zurich Portrait Prize 2019, an annual competition showcasing contemporary portraiture, will leave Dublin for the first time next month, and make its home in the comfortable surroundings of Cork’s Crawford Art Gallery.

The exhibition will run from 1 February until 13 April and will feature 26 shortlisted works as chosen by an esteemed judging panel.

The competition attracts entries from across the island of Ireland, as well as from Irish artists living abroad, and will be on display in Crawford’s historic Gibson Galleries.

Enda Bowe, this year’s overall winner of the prize, is an Irish artist who lives and works in London. His work is concerned with storytelling and the search for light and beauty in the ordinary.

This year also marks the introduction of the Zurich Young Portrait Prize in which artists from three to 18 years old are shortlisted and placed on display with the main exhibition.

The first winner of the Zurich Young Portrait Prize is the photograph ‘The new age’ by 12 year old cousins Mabel Forsyth and Mary O’Carroll, who said that their photograph “is meant to show that most people have both good and bad qualities”.

Mary McCarthy, Director of Crawford Art Gallery, said: “We are delighted to partner for the first time with the National Gallery of Ireland on the hugely anticipated Zurich Portrait Prize exhibition.

“We believe it will enable our audiences to make connections with our wider collection and support our deeper ongoing collaboration with the National Gallery of Ireland.”