Les Rencontres Arles Discovery Award 2010 winner Taryn Simon, Luma Prize Trisha Donnelly

© Taryn Simon TROY WEBB Scene of the crime, The Pines, Virginia Beach, Virginia Served 7 years of a 47-year sentence for Rape, Kidnapping and Robbery 2002, Copyright Rencontres Arles

Two artists presented at Les Rencontres D’Arles Discovery Award 2010 by Hans-Ulrich Obrist & Philippe Parreno have won awards at the annual photography festival in the south east of France.

The clear favourite and deserved winner of the Discovery Award 2010 is American Taryn Simon for The Innocents series. Simon was born in 1975 in New York where she lives and works. An earlier post links to a 17-minute TED online talk where Simon discusses this work as well as her next project An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar for which she was nominated for the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize 2009. Paul Graham won.

The Discovery Award “goes to a photographer, or an artist making use of photography, whose work has recently been internationally recognized or deserves to be. The winner is chosen by the photography professionals present in Arles during opening week and receives 25,000 €”.

The winner of the new Luma Prize is Trisha Donnelly. Donnelly was born in 1974 in San Francsiso where she lives and works.”Often taking the form of gatherings of objects in various media, from assembled sculptures to drawings and photographs, Donnelly’s exhibitions tease the viewer with their imitations of meaning; orientation within this space is seldom straightforward, but is pregnant with possibility”. Press release.

The LUMA Foundation is “backing the Discovery Award judged by photography professionals taking part in Opening Fortnight and the new LUMA Prize judged by an internationally recognised contemporary artist. The winner of each award receives 25,000 euros. The LUMA Foundation is also backing the Contemporary and Historical Book Awards, each worth 8000 euros. All the competing work will be on show in the Atelier de Mécanique”.

Selection of the artists:

The curators of the 2010 edition of the Discovery Award and the LUMA Prize are artists or directors or curators of major cultural institutions. All are members of the core group formed by the LUMA Foundation to decide on the content of the Parc des Ateliers exhibitions.

Artists nominated by Tom Eccles, executive director of the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College, New York State:
Anne Collier
Liz Deschenes
Roe Ethridge

Artists nominated by Liam Gillick, artist and teacher at the School of the Arts, Columbia University, New York City:
Marlo Pascual
Gilad Ratman
Solmaz Shahbazi

Artists nominated by Beatrix Ruf, director and curator of the Zurich Kunsthalle:
Annette Kelm
Elad Lassry
Leigh Ledare

Artists nominated by Hans Ulrich Obrist, co-director of programming at the Serpentine Gallery, London and Philippe Parreno, artist, Paris:
Trisha Donnelly – Luma prize 2010 winner
Shannon Ebner
Hans-Peter Feldmann
Darius Khondji
Kazuo Shinohara
Taryn Simon – Discovery Award winner 2010

A NEW AWARD: THE LUMA PRIZE
One of the nominated artists will receive the €25,000 LUMA Prize, to be judged annually by an internationally recognised contemporary artist. This first edition will be judged by the art duo Fischli & Weiss (Peter Fischli and David Weiss).