Feature Pavel Buchler Wins The Northern Art Prize

We hear from to the man who's just scooped this year's Northern Art Prize

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The enigmatic artist Pavel Büchler, 57, originally from Czechoslovakia and now living and working in Manchester, has been named the overall winner of the third annual Northern Art Prize. He was one of four short listed artists competing for the prize.

For a man who has only won one other prize in his lifetime, a helicopter trip at the age of 13, Büchler had a surprisingly cool response to his win: “I’m not enthusiastic about the idea of competitions,” he said. “Yes, I’m pleased with the result. It’s good to have the peer recognition from people I highly respect. But I’d be perfectly happy not to enter any more competitions in the future.”

Accepting the £16,500 prize money at Leeds Art Gallery on 21st January, Büchler recounted, in front of a packed audience, his first art-prize victory as a teenager - a competition to write a history essay that won him a 40 minute flight over Prague. Runners-up won a 20 and 10 minute trip in the same helicopter. Büchler revealed that initially he was angry that the pilot didn’t land to drop off the runners-up, but soon reconsidered. “I first of all thought it was unfair, but in the end we all flew around for at least two hours,” he said. “That’s how it should be.”

He also said that the £16,500 prize money would be used to “repair the roof over my head”. B?chler displayed seven of his most recent pieces, including Eclipse, a technically simple but conceptually complex installation merging science and poetry. It consists of nine 1950s Leitz Prado projectors casting circles of light on a wall, evoking the structure of the solar system.

A football, tennis ball, squash ball and other spherical objects were inserted into the optics of the projectors create the effect of several overlapping eclipses that alternate between light and dark depending on how the visitors to the exhibition move about within the piece.

In choosing B?chler as winner, the judges said he’d been “consistently influential to a huge amount of people throughout his career, as a practitioner and teacher. We were particularly impressed with Eclipse, which we felt to be a very strong piece of work,” they said.

Since 27th November 2009, B?chler and the other short listed artists: Nick Crowe and Ian Rawlinson, Rachel Goodyear and Matt Stokes have shown work made in the last two years at Leeds Art Gallery. The other entrants each receive £1,500 prize money. Visitors to the shortlist exhibition gave their popular vote to Gateshead-based artist Matt Stokes and his film of punk-rock subculture in Austin, Texas.

So will good things come in threes - what’s the next thing Pavel B?chler has his heart set on winning? “Perhaps the lottery,” he says. The only problem? “I’d need to buy a ticket first…”
The Northern Art Prize is running until 21 February at Leeds Art Gallery, The Headrow, LS1 3AA, 0113 247 8248, free. For more information visit www.northernartprize.org.uk

Posted on Friday 5th February 2010
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