The Derek Williams Trust Artes Mundi Purchase Prize
A further strand of our activity related to our biennial exhibition is the Derek Williams Trust Artes Mundi Purchase Prize. Working alongside our partner, the National Museum Cardiff, and an invited juror, this award is to acquire a work by one or more of the shortlisted artists from our exhibitions for the Amgueddfa Cymru-National Museum Wales. As such it forms a lasting legacy toward the genesis of a national collection of contemporary visual art for Wales.
Mounira Al Solh
Lebanese artist Mounira Al Solh is the 2024 recipient of the Derek Williams Trust Artes Mundi Purchase Prize.
Prabhakar Pachpute
Prabhakar Pachpute was the recipient of the Derek Williams Trust Artes Mundi Purchase Prize for 2021.
Anna Boghiguian
Canadian/ Egyptian artist Anna Boghiguian was the recipient of the Derek Williams Trust Artes Mundi Purchase Prize in 2018.
Bedwyr Williams
Welsh artist Bedwyr Williams was awarded the Derek Williams Trust Artes Mundi Purchase Prize in 2016.
Ragnar Kjartansson
Icelandic artist Ragnar Kjartansson draws on the histories of film, music, theatre, visual culture and literature to develop video installations, durational performances (sometimes lasting hours or weeks), drawing and painting.
Tania Bruguera
Tania Bruguera consciously rejects the use of the gallery space and through an interdisciplinary practice spanning installation, social intervention and most prominently performance, explores the role art can play in daily political life, bringing light to the individual’s understanding of self as part of a collective historical and contemporary social memory.
Olga Chernysheva
Based in Moscow, Olga Chernysheva produces work in which her subjects are observed negotiating a turbulent society where the sense of a shared future has disappeared.
Lida Abdul
Alongside Mircea Cantor, Lida Abdul also had her video work The Tree (2005) acquired as one of the winners of the Derek Williams Trust Artes Mundi Purchase Prize during Artes Mundi 3. The documentary centres on a discussion between young men reflecting on their reason for cutting down a tree that is still alive and bearing fruits. They explain that because it was the site of many hangings, it had to be destroyed.
Mircea Cantor
Alongside Lida Abdul, Mircea Cantor was awarded the Derek Williams Trust Artes Mundi Purchase Prize in 2011 and his sculpture Diamond Corn (2005) in glass crystal was acquired for the collection.
Mauricio Dias & Walter Riedweg
Alongside Eija-Liisa Ahtila, Mauricio Dias & Walter Riedweg also had their work acquired as one of the winners of the Derek Williams Trust Artes Mundi Purchase Prize during Artes Mundi 2. Their single channel video work, Throw (2004) documents ‘the everyday rebellion of the little man’, as citizens of Helsinki were invited to throw anything they liked at a sheet of glass.
Eija-Liisa Ahtila
In addition to being the recipient of the Artes Mundi 2 Prize in 2006, Finnish artist Eija-Liisa Ahtila also had her four-channel video work, The Hour of Prayer (2005) acquired for the contemporary collection of the National Museum Wales as the winner of the Artes Mundi Derek Williams Trust Purchase Prize. Based on the artist's own life, it tells the story of death entering a house and of the process of dealing with grief through a sequence of events that begin in New York during a winter storm in January and end in Benin, West Africa, eleven months later.
Berni Searle
Best known for producing digital video and lens-based media installations, Berni Searle’s “performative” works may be seen as a series of ongoing explorations around issues of self-representation, personal and collective identity. Her film work, Snow White (2001) was the first piece acquired through the Derek Williams Trust Artes Mundi Purchase Prize.