OSLO.- The winner of the world’s most important prize for printmaking, The Queen Sonja Print Award 2020, is the Irish-Canadian artist, Ciara Phillips it was announced today following a unanimous decision by the Jury. Forty-four artists were nominated for the 2020 award by curators, museum directors and fellow artists from all over the world. The nominees reflect the breadth of contemporary printmaking today, ranging from traditional forms to new approaches involving installation, collage and performance.

The Award Winner received the prize yesterday, at a private audience with Her Majesty the Queen at the Royal Palace in Oslo.




The 2020 jury consisted of Emi Eu, Executive Director of STPI - Creative Workshop & Gallery in Singapore, Philip Tinari, Director and CEO of UCCA Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing, and Christopher Le Brun, painter, printmaker and sculptor, and former President of the Royal Academy of Arts 2011-2019.

The Queen Sonja Art Foundation was established in 2011 to generate interest in and promote the development of graphic art and printmaking. The Foundation presents the Queen Sonja Print Award every two years. Previous prize winners are: Tiina Kivinen, Finland (2012), Svend-Allan Sørensen, Denmark (2014), Tauba Auerbach, USA (2016) and Emma Nishimura, Canada (2018). The winner receives a cash prize of NOK 400,000 and a residency at the Atelje Larsen art studio in Helsingborg, Sweden.

Her Majesty Queen Sonja said: “I am delighted that the Queen Sonja Print Award 2020 goes to an artist that is so deeply committed to the art of printmaking. Ciara Phillips’ formal and social experiments within the graphic arts are bold and unconventional yet striking and aesthetic. “

Ciara Phillips (b.1976) is an Irish-Canadian artist living and working in Glasgow, Scotland. Phillips has her MA in Fine Art from Glasgow School of Art, Scotland, and her BA in Fine Art, from Queen’s University, Kingston, Canada. The artist has exhibited widely in public galleries and museums in the UK and internationally. Her long-term artwork Workshop (2010 - ongoing) was nominated for a Turner Prize in 2014. Recent exhibitions of Phillips’ work have been staged at: Kunsthall Stavanger; V&A Dundee; Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney; Benaki Museum, Athens; Bergen Kunsthall; TATE Britain, London; Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh; Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Kingston, Canada; and The Showroom, London. She has worked as a lecturer in Fine Art at the University of Cumbria and most recently at Glasgow School of Art. In 2021 she will be staging exhibitions at The Model, Sligo, the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh and 39th Eva International in Limerick (in collaboration with curator Sara Greavu).