This year S.M.A.K. and the Friends of the S.M.A.K. are once again offering a platform for talented young people from the Belgian art colleges.
‘Friends of the S.M.A.K. Prize | Coming People’ is a biennial competition for young artists who have just graduated from one of the Belgian art colleges.
It remains a difficult task for recent graduates to move into the art field. By presenting the work of promising young Belgian art graduates to a broad audience, ‘Friends of the S.M.A.K. Prize | Coming People 2016’ aims to build a bridge between the colleges and the professional world.
‘Coming People’ already has a long tradition. From 2001 to 2011, S.M.A.K. and the Friends of the S.M.A.K. organised an annual exhibition of work selected from the end-of-the-year presentations at Ghent’s art colleges. Since 2014 the competition has only been held once every two years, but is now intended for all Belgian artist graduates.
The selection of the artists is done by an international jury whose members are Susanne Titz (Director of Museum Abteiberg, Mönchengladbach), Denis Gielen (Director of MAC’s, Hornu), Zoë Gray (Senior Curator at WIELS, Brussels), Anders Kreuger (Curator at M HKA, Antwerp), Martin Germann (Senior Curator at S.M.A.K., Ghent) and Ann Hoste (Curator at S.M.A.K., Ghent). Once the selection has been made, S.M.A.K. will put together an exhibition of representative work by the winners in consultation with the artists themselves.
