BRUSSELS PRIZE FOR DUNCORMICK ARTIST
ELS DIETVORST TO RECEIVE INTERNATIONAL AWARD FOR HER WORK
THE WEXFORD-BASED artist Els Dietvorst has won the international Evens Arts Prize which she will receive at an awards ceremony in the Centre for Fine Arts in Brussels on Monday, May 29.
The visual artist and filmmaker is a native of Belgium living in Duncormick. She is the director of the film The Rabbit & The Teasel, which will be screened at the awards ceremony following a speech by Bart De Baere, director of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Antwerp.
Els will be presented with the biennial prize by Corinne Evens, honorary president of the Evens Foundation, a European public benefit body which supports projects in education, journalism, science and the arts.
Els was selected as the 2017 Arts Prize recipient from a total of 16 candidates working in artistic disciplines including writing, theatre, visual arts and film.
The Foundation based in Antwerp singles out work that contributes to the strengthening of European identity based on cultural and social diversity, encouraging people and nations to live harmoniously in a diverse Europe.
The organisation promotes respect for diversity both individual and collective and works to strengthen people’s physical, psychological and moral integrity.
While she is mainly a filmmaker, Els also uses drawing, writing and sculpture in her work which has been shown in New York, Utrecht, Casablanca, London and Vienna. She was chosen for the Evens Prize by a international jury of seven experts in the field of art and culture
The prestigious award is for her film work in which she holds up a mirror that allows the viewer to tune into the universal ‘everydayness’ of the world.
The Rabbit & The Teasel is a feature length film set in Duncormick where Els moved from Brussels in 2010. Intrigued by what was happening around her, she began to record the everyday lives of her neighbours, resulting in a series of video testimonies that were woven together into a documentary called The Black Lamb.
The documentary included interviews with JT Butler, the youngest member of a third generation of cattle dealers which evolved into a larger project The Rabbit & The Teasel, transforming Butler’s story into a modern day rural drama.
The characters were played by local adults and children including Alice McCoy, PJ Cullen, Séamus McCoy, Caelen Hunt, Liam Heffernan and Sam Molyneux and the music was composed by Laura Hyland, a Wexford artist and musician. The voice-over was done by Liam Heffernan, known from Irish television series including The Clash of the Ash.
The 2014 film which was almost entirely shot at Breen Farm in Lough, Duncormick, uses fiction, autobiographical elements and events from the past, present and future to tell a lyrical tale on the theme of life’s stuggle. The artist also reflects on her own life and what it means to live and survive far from the comforts of the city.
Els who takes inspiration from directors such as Robert Bresson, Andrei Tarkovsky and Werner Herzog, studied at the Royal Academy Antwerp and graduated from Sint-Lukas Brussels University College of Art and Design with a master’s degree in fine arts. She is a visiting lecturer at IT Carlow Wexford Campus