Entries for Holt Festival – Sir John Hurt Art Prize close at midnight 17 July

Time is running out for artists to enter one of the most prestigious art prizes in the East of England.

The Holt Festival-Sir John Hurt Art Prize closes its doors to submissions next Tuesday, 17 June. There have already been almost 200 entries from around the country but organisers want to remind artists, especially those in Norfolk, that there is still time to submit an entry although the deadline is fast approaching.

Following the deadline the judges will select a shortlist of 25-30. The shortlisted entries will be listed with images on the festival website and also exhibited at the Auden Theatre, Holt during the Festival (21-29 July) with the winner announced at a private view on the evening of Sunday 22 July. The exhibition is part of the Holt Festival Art Trail that also takes in many other galleries and exhibition spaces around the town.

The winning entry will win a cash prize of £1,750 for the winner and the opportunity for the work to be exhibited at the prestigious Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts in Norwich.

The Sir John Hurt Art Prize is open to artists everywhere and in previous years there have been entries from all over the UK. All types of visual art are welcome.

17 June is also the closing date for artists within 15 miles of Holt to participate in the first ever Holt Festival Open Studios. This is a great opportunity for artists to invite the public to their studios and will run over the opening weekend of the festival, from 21-23 July between 10am & 5pm with a map detailing participating artists available to download from www.holtfestival.org. Open Studios are FREE to visit and offer people the chance to meet artists in their own studios to talk about their work and buy original artworks directly from their creators.

Holt Festival Fine Art Director James Glennie commented ‘The Holt Festival-Sir John Hurt Art Prize and Open Studios are great opportunities for both emerging and established artists. The Prize becomes better known each year with entries coming from further afield and the quality getting better each time, making the judges job ever more difficult. There are also so many talented artists living and working in the area so we hope that the Open Studios will enable many of them to reach new audiences as well as giving the art loving public the opportunity to meet and learn about our local artists’.

This year’s Art Prize judges are renowned painter and printmaker Eileen Cooper RA, modern and contemporary British art specialist Robert Upstone, who was a senior Tate curator for 23 years, and Lady Anwen Hurt who has maintained a life-long interest in the visual arts and was married to actor/artist Sir John Hurt.

Sir John Hurt Art Prize and Open Studios entry forms can be downloaded from www.holtfestival.org/whats-on/art-prize. Artists with queries about Open Studios should email [email protected]

The 2018 Holt Festival runs from 21 – 29 July and has become acknowledged as the leading new festival in the county. The charming Norfolk Georgian country town comes alive for an exuberant week of international music, drama, visual art, dance, comedy and children’s shows. www.holtfestival.org