Tim Lee Wins 2008 Sobey Art Award presented by Scotiabank

West Coast Artist Awarded $50,000

Canada’s contemporary art community is gathered this evening at the Royal Ontario Museum to celebrate the passion and talent of Canada’s young contemporary artists and to honour Tim Lee, winner of the 2008 Sobey Art Award.

Commenting on Lee’s selection, the Curatorial Panel for the 2008 Sobey Art Award stated, “Lee’s work brings together formalism and conceptualism; its visual impact always exceeding the multiple levels that go into it. His work is a meditation on the unreliability of vision and the shifting nature of identity. He is as much rooted in his community as he is involved in the global interrogation of forms and identity.”

Tim Lee lives and works in Vancouver, British Columbia. Working with photography, video, text and sculpture, Lee's work both replicates and re-imagines seminal moments in art history and popular culture. Lee’s work will be featured at the upcoming Biennale of Sydney, Australia; in a fall 2008 solo exhibition at the Hayward gallery in London UK; and a solo exhibition at the Contemporary Art Museum in Houston, Texas.

Lee was selected from among five shortlisted artists from across Canada.

“The 2008 Sobey Art Award is a true showcase of Canada's best young artists,” said Donald R. Sobey, Chair, Sobey Art Foundation. “Congratulations to the winner, Tim Lee, and all of the shortlisted artists for creating such impactful and important works.”

“Culture is a mirror of who we are as a society and Scotiabank’s support of Canada’s cultural communities is a reflection of who we are as a corporation,” said Rick Waugh, President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Scotiabank. “Scotiabank is proud to be the presenting sponsor of the Sobey Art Award and pleased to do our part to support Canada’s cultural communities.”

The exhibition featuring the five finalists for the Sobey Art Award is on display until October 13, 2008 at the Royal Ontario Museum and hosted by the ROM’s Institute for Contemporary Culture.

The Sobey Art Award, created in 2002 by the Sobey Art Foundation, is an annual prize given to an artist under 40 who has exhibited in a public or commercial art gallery within 18 months of being nominated. Since its inception the Sobey Art Award and accompanying exhibition have been organized and administered by the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia. Since 2006, thanks to an on-going partnership with Scotiabank, the Sobey Art Award and exhibition are celebrated annually. For more information, visit www.sobeyartaward.ca.

The Sobey Art Award curatorial advisory panel is made up of five distinguished representatives from a Canadian art gallery in each of the five regions. A panel of curatorial advisors, consisting of a representative from a noted gallery in each of five regions (Atlantic, Quebec, Ontario, Prairies /North, and West Coast), develops the shortlist for the Award. The curatorial panel creates a list of five artists from each region; these are selected from the list of nominated artists, and based on their professional knowledge of their regions and of the national art scene. The curatorial panel then meets and chooses one representative from each region to be included on the national shortlist. The panel will choose the winner on October 1, 2008.

Sobey Art Foundation

The Sobey Art Foundation was established in 1981 with a mandate to carry on the work of entrepreneur and business leader, the late Frank H. Sobey, of collecting and preserving representative examples of 19th and 20th century Canadian art. One of the finest private collections of its kind, the Sobey Art Foundation has assembled exemplary examples from Canadian Masters like Cornelius Krieghoff, Tom Thomson and J.E.H MacDonald. The collection is housed in an intimate setting at Crombie House, the former home of Frank Sobey and his wife Irene in Pictou County, Nova Scotia. Tours are regularly scheduled throughout the summer months and by appointment year round.

Scotiabank

Scotiabank is committed to supporting the communities in which we live and work, both in Canada and abroad. Recognized as a leader internationally and among Canadian corporations for its charitable donations and philanthropic activities, in 2007 the Bank provided more than $43 million in sponsorships and donations to a variety of projects and initiatives, primarily in the areas of healthcare, education, social services and arts and culture. Scotiabank is on the World Wide Web at www.scotiabank.com

Art Gallery of Nova Scotia

The Art Gallery of Nova Scotia acts as a gateway for the visual arts in Atlantic Canada by bringing the art of the world to Nova Scotia and the art of Nova Scotia to the world. It is an agency of the Province of Nova Scotia responsible for the preservation, exhibition and education of art through its branches in Halifax and Yarmouth.