The Trustees of the Golden Fleece Award are delighted to announce the three winners of the 2022 Golden Fleece Award: Dublin-based multimedia installation artist Michelle Malone, Derry photographer and filmmaker Locky Morris, and Irish-born glass artist Laura Quinn, who now lives and works in Surrey. Each recipient receives an award of €10,000.
Cathy Burke (ceramics), Chloë Dowds (ceramics), Genevieve Howard (art jewellery / sculptural objects), Lauren Gault (sculpture / installation), Margaret O'Brien (installation / mixed media), Rajinder Singh (performance / video / installation), and Róisín Pierce (textiles / fashion) were also shortlisted for the 2022 Award.
The 2022 Golden Fleece Award was presented at a ceremony at Solstice Arts Centre in Navan, Co. Meath on Saturday 23 April, during a reception held to mark the opening of The Golden Fleece Award: 21 years, a special exhibition of work by past recipients of the Award, as well as this year's winners.
Organised to celebrate the Award's twenty-first birthday, the exhibition was curated by Aisling Prior and features work by 46 visual artists, makers, craftspeople and designers. It runs at the arts centre from 23 April to 4 June 2022. Full details of the exhibition and accompanying learning and engagement events are available on Solstice Arts Centre's website.
212 eligible applications were received for the 2022 Golden Fleece Award, with 174 Visual Art entries and 38 Craft + Applied Art submissions. The 2022 Award's prize fund, worth a total of €30,000, was supported by a very generous bequest to the Golden Fleece Trust from the Estate of engineer and artist Seán Mulcahy, whose father Richard Mulcahy invited the Award's founder, Lillias Mitchell, to establish the Weaving Department at the National College of Art & Design, Dublin in the 1950s when he was Minister for Education. The Trustees of the Award are extremely grateful for this bequest, which has supported the prize fund over two years, 2021 and 2022.
The mission of the Golden Fleece Award is to provide resources for practising visual, craft and applied artists originally from or living on the island of Ireland to innovate and develop their artistic vision, in accordance with Lillias’ intentions as set out in her Letter of Wishes to her Trustees.
Her Trustees are supported in carrying out her wishes by the Golden Fleece Award Advisory Panel, which this year comprised Angela O’Kelly (Panel Chair, jeweller and Head of Design for Body & Environment, NCAD); Roger Bennett (woodturner); Dr Declan Long (art critic and Co-Director of the MA ‘Art in the Contemporary World’, NCAD); Catherine Marshall (art historian, editor and curator); and Dr. Audrey Whitty (Head of Collections and Learning, National Museum of Ireland).
The standard of applications this year was outstanding and a tribute to the professionalism within the creative sector. There was tremendous freshness and variety in the ambitious proposals received, which made the task of the 2022 Advisory Panel extremely difficult. So many were deserving of the Award, and I would urge all that applied but were not winners this year to continue to apply in the future. Angela O’Kelly, Chair of the Golden Fleece Award Advisory Panel
The Trustees of the Golden Fleece Award were, once again, delighted by the strong number and high standard of applications received for the 2022 Award, both from the visual arts and craft and applied arts worlds. We are delighted to be celebrating the Trust's twenty-first birthday in 2022 with a special exhibition, and very grateful to all those who have been involved with the Golden Fleece over the years. The Trustees are particularly thankful to our Advisory Panel, chaired so skilfully and generously by Angela O'Kelly, and to Solstice Arts Centre for facilitating this wonderful presentation of past and present winners’ work. We offer our heartiest congratulations to the recipients of the Award this year, and also to all who were shortlisted. Barbara Cotter, Chair of the Board of Trustees
