ABOVE: Detail from Sue Williams’ Wish U Were Here (2003). Williams is one of six artists shortlisted for the Welsh Artes Mundi Prize.

This one’s a little late, as the shortlist for the newish Artes Mundi Prize—the two-year old, £40,000 prize backed by various Welsh arts organizations which have no name recognition but serious dough—was announced late last week. The artists competing for the Artes Mundi, which has quickly become one of the richest such competitions in the world, are: Eija-Liisa Ahtila, Thomas Demand, Brazilian/Swiss duo Mauricio Dias & Walter Riedweg, Leandro Erlich, Subodh Gupta, Sue Williams, and Wu Chi-Tsung. Williams is the only Welsh resident represented in the list, and she moved from England Proper in the first place.

Selected works from each artist will be shown between 11th - May 7th 2006 at the National Gallery in Cardiff, and the winner of the big cheque will be announced on March 31, 2006. The Artes Mundi website includes information on all the free events going on with the exhibit, such as lunchtime lectures and guided tours of the works. A fun feature—presumably a serious issue of literacy and nationalism inside Wales, but we’re not in wales, are we?—is the link to turn all the text on the site into gibberish. Oh right, Welsh.

LINK: BBC > Welsh art prize entrants revealed

[And sorry for never posting yesterday; we’ve decided retroactively that we took Rosh Hashanah off. Happy New Year!]