From hundreds of entries, the shortlists of this year’s Zurich Portrait Prize and Zurich Young Portrait Prize have been announced by the National Gallery of Ireland.
26 artists, working across a variety of media, have made it through to the final stage of the Zurich Portrait Prize, while 20 young artists aged between four and eighteen years old have been shortlisted for the Zurich Young Portrait Prize.
This year, 4 young artists from Clare are shortlisted for the Zurich Young Portrait Prize: Katie Cashin; Viktoria Kroejeva; Cathal Ryan and Aoife Sweeney.
The winner of the Zurich Portrait Prize will receive a cash prize of €15,000 and will be commissioned to create a work for the national portrait collection, for which they will be awarded a further €5,000. Two additional awards of €1,500 will be given to highly commended works. Judges for the Zurich Portrait Prize are Diana Copperwhite, artist; Anna O’Sullivan, Director of the Butler Gallery, Kilkenny; and Nick Miller, artist.
The Zurich Young Portrait Prize returns for its fourth year in 2022. Five winners (one from each respective age category and an overall winner) will be selected from a shortlist of hundreds of entries from young people aged four to 18 from across the island of Ireland. Winners will receive a bespoke art box and a cash prize. The overall competition winner will be awarded a personalised wooden box of high-quality art materials, specific to their choice of material in their portrait, and a cash prize of €500. All twenty shortlisted entrants will have their artwork professionally framed/prepared. This year’s Zurich Young Portrait Prize judges are: Janet McLean, curator, National Gallery of Ireland; Nick Roche, comic illustrator; and Una Sealy RHA, artist.
Exhibitions of shortlisted works in both competitions run at the National Gallery of Ireland between 26 November 2022 and 2 April 2023. The exhibition will then travel to the Regional Cultural Centre, Letterkenny, Co. Donegal, where it will be displayed between 3 June and 2 September 2023.