VICTORIA, BC.-The Art Gallery of Greater Victoria presents The Sobey Award, on view through August 21, 2005. The Gallery is extremely pleased to welcome works from five of Canada's top emerging artists – the finalists of the Sobey Art Foundation's Sobey Art Award. This biennial award, first presented in 2002 to Vancouver's Brian Jungen, the Sobey Art Award is Canada's pre-eminent prize for a young artist and comes with an unprecedented prize of $50,000. The Sobey Art Foundation calls upon a panel of five curatorial advisors, consisting of a representative from a major gallery in the regions of the Atlantic, Quebec, Ontario, Prairies and North, and the West. This year, our own Lisa Baldissera, Curator of Contemporary Art, was an advisor along with Ray Cronin of the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia; Stéphane Aquin, Musée des Beauxarts de Montréal; David Liss, Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art; and Catherine Crowston, Edmonton Art Gallery. These curatorial advisors developed a shortlist of five artists working in each of their regions and met in Halifax to narrow the national “longlist” of 25 artists to a shortlist of five with one representative from each region. Qualifying artists must be 39 years old or younger and have established a professional record by recently showing their work in a public or commercial art gallery in Canada.

The Sobey Art Award Touring Exhibition 2004 features works from these finalists including kinetic installations by Jean-Pierre Gauthier (Quebec); video installation by Althea Thauberger (The West); drawings and paintings by Marcel Dzama (Prairies and the North); conceptual and object based projects by Germaine Koh (Ontario) including “Knitwork”, an ongoing project begun in 1992; and works of new sculptural realism by Greg Forrest (Atlantic Canada).