15 September 2012 - 13 January 2013

The bold, the beautiful and the audacious of contemporary painting are brought together once more for the John Moores Painting Prize.

As the UK’s biggest painting prize the exhibition promises to bring the most exciting and cutting edge paintings to our attention. The exhibition, a major strand of the Liverpool Biennial, always fascinates with its often quirky, sometimes controversial but never boring works. Described by 2010 judge, Sir Norman Rosenthal, as “the Oscars of the painting world” the John Moores has a track record for spotting rising talent. Previous winners read like a roll call of the most influential artists from the past 50 years of British painting. Including the likes of Jack Smith, Richard Hamilton, Mary Martin, David Hockney and Peter Doig, the latest to join this elite list was Keith Coventry who won the £25,000 first prize in 2010. 

Open to all painters based in the UK, the works are selected anonymously from an open submission by an independent jury, who also award the main prizes. With a different panel for each exhibition, the judges’ selection is inevitably as distinctive and individual as the works themselves.

This year the judges are Alan Yentob, creative director of the BBC; previous John Moores exhibitors and Turner Prize nominees, George Shaw and Angela de la Cruz; Merseyside-born YBA and Turner Prize nominee Fiona Banner, and, hailed as the art world’s most influential woman by the Financial Times, director of the Whitechapel, Iwona Blazwick. Previous judges have included the artists Tracey Emin and the Chapman brothers, musician Jarvis Cocker and writer Germaine Greer.