The Northern Art Prize 2011 has been won by Leo Fitzmaurice.
Judge Simon Wallis presented Fitzmaurice with a cheque for £16,500 at the prize-giving ceremony on 19 January at Leeds Art Gallery attended by over 500 people from the arts, business, public and voluntary sectors. The remaining three short listed artists; Liadin Cooke, James Hugonin and Richard Rigg each walked away with £1,500.
Fitzmaurice’s work is characterised by a desire to reorganise the everyday and familiar. He re-presents our world to make us look again at what we take for granted. In his work there is often an instant recognition combined with a playful delight as the familiar is unsettled.
Leo Fitzmaurice was born in Shropshire in 1963 and studied in Liverpool and Manchester. His work has been included extensively in group exhibitions in the UK and internationally including; ‘The Way We Do art Now’, Tanya Leighton Gallery, Berlin (2010); ‘Undone’, Henry Moore Institute, Leeds (2010); ‘Good Riddance’, MOT, London (2008); ‘Flyersflagsheepself’, Seventeen Gallery, London (2009); ‘Niet Normaal’, De Beurs Van Berlag, Amsterdam (2010). He has most recently had solo shows at The New Art Gallery Walsall and Cube Manchester. Currently he is showing work in Chain Chain Chain, Bischoff Weiss, London, and working on a commission for the new London Hospital in Whitechapel, London. Fitzmaurice currently lives and works in The Wirral. – www.northernartprize.org.uk
