Akureyri, in northern Iceland, was to place to be September 22 as Icelandic artists and art professionals gathered for the first time to hand out the new Icelandic Visual Arts Award.

The Icelandic Visual Arts Awards are a joint project of the Municipality of Akureyri, Form Iceland, and the Association of Icelandic Visual Artists.
The aim of this undertaking is to grant annual awards in the field of visual arts and thereby bring attention to the outstanding contributions of artists and designers working in Iceland and of Icelandic visual artists abroad, support an increase in the public’s knowledge of, interest in, and access to the visual arts, encourage the development of professional knowledge, and create a platform for the production of future work.

Six artists, or groups of artists who usually work together, receive nominations in the two fields of art and design, in order to recognise their contribution to their respective disciplines during the twelve-month period prior to the nominations. Any artist or designer can be considered for these nominations who has exhibited works during this period or publicised them through some other means.

Two of these nominees then each receive the Icelandic Visual Arts Award, as well as a prize in the amount of ISK 2,000,000. An Honorary Award is given every year to an artist or designer in recognition of his or her unique lifetime contributions to the visual arts.

The first award for art went to Hildur Bjarnadóttir who will already be familiar to List readers. The award for design went to Guðrún Lilja Gunnlaugsdóttir. Finally, the honorary award for long-term achivement went to Magnús Pálsson, of which more can be read elsewhere in this issue.

The jury said of Hildur's work: "[In the work Gingham] Hildur has hand-coloured the thread with yellow, red, green and brown acrylic paint and woven it together to make four different canvasses that she then has stretched onto stretcher-bars. The outcome is work that is tapestry and painting at the same time, in canvas rather than on canvas. Hildur has previously treated painting as subject matter, playfully deconstructing the ideas around its status by literally unraveling the canvas and crocheting it to create Reconstructed Canvas II, a work that is simultaneously a canvas, a crocheted cloth and an image in the style of monochrome painting. [...] Hildur questions the validity of this binary opposition [between high and low art] by transposing handicrafts to the realm of high art, utilising her knowledge of handicraft techniques in a philosophical approach to art. This approach takes on further significance in that she specifically concentrates on traditional handcrafts usually thought of as women’s crafts."