Thapong calls for artists to submit high quality works

 

The much anticipated annual Thapong Artist of the Year Award is fast approaching with almost a month remaining before the submission date. 

The exhibition presents itself as an embodiment of spectacle, wonder, a site of construction of the unfolding new creative concepts—as artists, from diverse artistic disciplines make usurpation of an array of materials both contemporary and junk picked from the environment to propagate astonishingly excellent or breath-taking artworks which are not informed by any specified theme. 

The BTC-sponsored art competition is one of the finest and the biggest in the country with many artists taking part. Thapong Visual Arts Centre has challenged artists to present works of higher quality that outline a significant level of maturity in terms of articulation, finishing, presentation and conceptual or thought process. “It is rather concerning that there is a culture of regurgitation or perhaps appropriation of existing ideas that at times points out to our inability to be creative as individual artists. We therefore implore each one of our artists to aspire to render artworks that speak in volumes to a wider audience, works that create a ‘wow’ factor and would make you want to see them recurrently,” reads a press staement from Thapong Visual Arts Centre.It further states that though they recognise the participation of upcoming new artists and veteran artists, they remain indebted to curating works of higher standard that correlate with where “we are today in terms of how the exhibition has grown over the years—and for the mere fact that it is the highest art award in the country.”