South Bank Sky Arts Awards 2013 nominees announced
TX: 14 March, Sky Arts 1 HD, 9.30pm
The nominees are announced today for the South Bank Sky Arts Awards, the only awards ceremony to celebrate the UK’s towering achievements across all genres of the arts over the past year.
The shortlist for 2013 proves no exception in the history of the awards, which pride themselves on honouring a wide range of phenomenal artistic achievement.
The 2012 Olympics not only brought a huge amount of joy and sporting accolades to the country, but also invigorated the UK’s art scene. The Olympic Velodrome, designed by Hopkins Architects, and the Olympic Cauldron by Thomas Heatherwick, have both been nominated in the best visual arts category. Paul Noble who was the bookie’s favourite for this year’s Turner Prize before losing out to Elizabeth Prince, is the third nominee in this hotly contested category.
The awards are one of the world’s most coveted arts awards, celebrating the best of British culture and achievement across visual art, theatre, opera, dance, comedy, classical music, pop, TV drama, literature and film. Melvyn Bragg will once again act as editor and master of ceremonies at the event on Tuesday 12 March at the Dorchester.
The literature category sees literary heavyweights Hilary Mantel and Will Self vie for the award against debut novelist Kerry Hudson. Mantel’s Bring up the Bodies proved victorious against Will Self’s Umbrella when they were both nominated for the Booker prize last year. They will both vie for a South Bank Sky Arts Award against Kerry Hudson’s hilarious and moving first novel Tony Hogan Bought Me an Ice-cream Float Before He Stole My Ma.
In what was an incredibly strong year across all of the categories, the nominees for the film award demonstrates the wealth and variety of UK creative talent at the moment. Sam Mendes’ Skyfall, the most successful Bond film ever, will go up against Peter Strickland's Berberian Sound Studio, a psychological thriller about a home counties sound engineer hired by a 70s Italian horror studio and Bart Layton’s documentary The Imposter, the extraordinary true story of Frenchman Frédéric Bourdin who fooled the world by posing as Nicholas Barclay, a teenage Texan boy who disappeared from his home in the early 90s.
In another first, all three nominations for the TV Drama category come from BBC2. The Hollow Crown, the adaptations of Shakespeare’s History Plays will vie with Tom Stoppard’s lavish adaptation of Ford Maddox Ford’s World War One drama Parade’s End which starred Benedict Cumberbatch and Rebecca Hall and Line of Duty, a dark drama about corruption at the heart of the police which starred Martin Compston and Vicky McClure.
In a strongly contested year for Comedy, Sky Atlantic has two comedies in the Best Comedy section as Alan Partridge: Welcome to The Places of My Life competes with Julia Davies’ period-sitcom homage to Daphne du Maurier in Hunderby. The BBC’s Olympic mockumentary Twenty Twelve completes the category.
“2012 was a remarkably fineyear for British achievement not least in British art, by British artists,” comments Melvyn Bragg. “Arriving at this shortlist was a tough jobfor our judges. Weare proud of this world class list of nominees which recognise and honour the best talent at work in the UK today.”
“What a tremendous shortlist for this, the third year of The South Bank Sky Arts Awards, which continue to grow from strength to strength,” comments James Hunt, channel director of Sky Arts.
“We are incredibly proud of this opportunity to live the motto of our channel which is to celebrate the best of the arts.”
The judges of this year’s South Bank Sky Arts Awards are Gilly Greenwood, Chair, Peter Aspden, Arts Correspondent of Financial Times; Baz Bamigboye, Entertainment Columnist & Arts Reviewer of Daily Mail; Richard Brooks, Arts Editor of The Sunday Times; Sarah Donaldson, Arts Editor of The Observer; Manisha Ferdinand, Head of PR Sky Arts & Sky Movies; Boyd Hilton, TV & Reviews Editor of Heat Magazine; Alex O'Connell, Arts & Entertainment Editor of The Times; and Archie Powell, Documentary Filmmaker.
This year, the South Bank Sky Arts award itself is designed and created by Livvy Fink, a masters student studying ceramics & glass at the Royal College of Art. Livvy was selected to create the new award in collaboration with the Royal College of Art.
SOUTH BANK SKY ARTS AWARDS 2013: FULL NOMINEE LIST
Classical Music
Iestyn Davies, Arcangelo, Jonathan Cohen - Arias for Guadagni
London Philharmonic Orchestra, Julian Anderson, Ryan Wigglesworth - The Discovery of Heaven - Royal Festival Hall
London Symphony Orchestra, Sir Simon Rattle - Wynton Marsalis’s Swing Symphony – Barbican.
Comedy
Alan Partridge: Welcome to The Places of My Life – Sky Atlantic
Hunderby – Sky Atlantic
Twenty Twelve – BBC 2
Dance
A Streetcar Named Desire, Scottish Ballet
Jeux, English National Ballet
Metamorphosis: Titian 2012, Royal Ballet & National Gallery
Film
Berberian Sound Studio
Skyfall
The Imposter
Literature
Bring Up The Bodies, Hilary Mantel
Tony Hogan Bought Me an Ice-cream Float Before He Stole My Ma, Kerry
Hudson
Umbrella, Will Self
Opera
Les Troyens, Royal Opera House
Ghost Patrol, Scottish Opera & Music Theatre Wales
Where the Wild Things Are, Barbican
Pop Music
Jessie Ware, Devotion
Plan B, Ill Manors
Saint Etienne, Words and Music
Theatre
The Curious Incident of The Dog in the Night-Time, National Theatre
The River, The Royal Court Theatre - Jerwood Theatre Upstairs
The Master & Margarita, Complicite – Barbican
TV Drama
Line of Duty, BBC 2
Parade’s End, BBC2
The Hollow Crown, BBC2
Visual Art
Hopkins Architects: London 2012 Velodrome, Olympic Park
Paul Noble: Turner Prize Exhibition, Tate Britain
Thomas Heatherwick: London 2012 Olympic Cauldron, Olympic Park
Outstanding Achievement in association with The Dorchester: To be announced on the day
For further information on the nominees, please visit www.sky.com/southbank
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT
Manisha Ferdinand Head of Sky Arts and Sky Movies PR, Sky Press Office
T: 0207 032 2842
E:
Katherine Solomon PR Manager, Sky Press Office
T: 0207 032 0599
E:
Dominic Collett Sky Arts Publicist, Sky Press Office
T: 0207 032 4892
E:
NOTES TO EDITOR
South Bank Show
The South Bank Sky Arts Awards (Previously the South Bank Show Awards) are now in their 16th year and are still the only awards ceremony in the world that represent the entire spectrum of British arts, from visual arts to opera, television drama to dance, film to literature. In addition to the 10 main categories, there are also two special awards: The Times Breakthrough Award, voted for by Times readers, which recognises up and coming talent across the arts, and The Dorchester Outstanding Achievement Award which celebrates an individual's extraordinary contribution to the arts.
The awards, which are presented by Melvyn Bragg at The Dorchester, always attract an eclectic mix of people. Previous attendees include Ronnie Wood, J K Rowling, Sir Ian McKellen, Darcey Bussell, Dame Judi Dench, Helen Mirren, Sir Tom Stoppard, Rachel Weisz, Russell Brand,, Damien Hirst, and Sir Richard Attenborough.
Previous winners include Arctic Monkeys, Sir Cameron Macintosh, Peter Grimes, Elbow, Sherlock and Amy Winehouse.
Sky Arts
Sky Arts offers an eclectic mix of the best music, arts, biographies, chat shows, film, drama and comedy. Sky is the only broadcaster in the UK and Ireland with channels dedicated solely to the arts, with 48 hours of the best arts content from around the world across Sky Arts 1 and Sky Arts 2 daily. Sky Arts now reaches more than 6 million viewers every month.
Recent highlights include Playhouse Presents… a series of one-off comedies and dramas starring renowned talent including Jon Hamm, Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Thompson, Sir Tom Jones, Brenda Blethyn, David Tennant and Alison Steadman. The channel was also responsible for resurrecting the much-loved South Bank Show and The South Bank Show Awards. Sky Arts also encourages new formats and methods for accessing the arts, working with the ENO and National Gallery to beam the world’s first live opera and first live opening night of an exhibition in 3D to cinemas across the UK and Ireland.
Sky Arts also seeks to connect with culture on the ground; creating and collaborating with the best of the arts in the UK and Ireland to bring new experiences to life. Sky Arts has collaborated with a number of arts organisations including the English National Ballet and has supported the Hay Festival as broadcast partner since 2006. The Sky Arts Ignition Series launched in in 2011 to invest in the arts landscape of the UK. The Series will seek to collaborate with six arts organisations over the next three years in the creation of brand new works; Sky Arts Ignition Series: Futures Fund will support five young artists with a bursary of £30,000 each, enabling Sky Arts to back the creation of new works of art as well as nurture emerging talent.
Follow us on twitter @skyarts. See sky.com/arts