Sam Smith, Paddington and English National Ballet amongst the nominees for this year’s South Bank Sky Arts Awards
The South Bank Sky Arts Awards today reveal the nominees for this year’s Awards which recognise the best of the best across all genres of the Arts including Dance, Opera, Comedy, TV Drama, Literature, Classical Music, Pop, Film, Visual Art and Theatre. A unique event in the British awards calendar, The South Bank Sky Arts Awards will be hosted by Melvyn Bragg who returns as editor and master of ceremonies at the Awards at The Savoy Hotel on Sunday 7th June at 7:30pm. This grand battle of the arts world will once again be aired exclusively on Sky Arts 1 on Wednesday 10th June at 8.00pm.
The Film Award will see sci-fi hit Under the Skin (starring Scarlett Johansson) fight it out with Paddington (starring Hugh Bonneville) and the uplifting Pride (starring Bill Nighy). Whilst in the Theatre category, The Almeida/Wyndham Theatre’s King Charles III will take on both his ancient ancestor Henry IV (Donmar Warehouse) and The Young Vic’s A View from the Bridge.
Within the Visual Art category Grayson Perry will be hoping to repeat his 2012 South Bank Sky Arts Award success (for The Tomb of the Unknown Craftsman) with Who Are You?, an exploration of the multiple identities that exist in modern Britain today. There will be steep competition however from the poignant Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red installation at HM Tower of London, and Phyllida Barlow’s visually imposing Dock which exhibited at the Tate Britain last year.
In the category for TV Drama and the Comedy category, the BBC is nominated five times with BBC Two’s The Honourable Woman, Line of Duty, W1A, The Trip to Italy and BBC One’s Happy Valley all nominated, whilst Sky Living’s Doll & Em, the smart and heartfelt comedy about friendship, is also up for the Comedy gong.
The inclusion of the Royal Opera House’s Die Frau Ohne Schatten, David Nicholls’ tale of a marriage in crisis Us and the Arditti Quartet’s 40 Years Young maintain the event’s tradition of rewarding every aspect of the Arts as these entrants compete amongst their peers for the Opera, Literature and Classical Music categories respectively.
This year’s award has been designed by a student at The Glasgow School of Art. All 76 students on the Silversmithing & Jewellery programme were invited to respond to the brief to create the award and 22-year old Miriam Woolf, a final year student, emerged as the winner. The awards themselves have been made in the GSA’s Silversmithing & Jewellery department by the same team of experts who made the widely-admired 2014 Commonwealth Games medals.
A further two awards - the Outstanding Achievement Award and The Times Breakthrough Award - will also be presented on the night. The Times Breakthrough Award nominees will be announced in The Times on Monday 4th May. The winner will be decided by public vote at thetimes.co.uk/breakthrough.
Melvyn Bragg, Editor and Presenter of the South Bank Show, commented, “Yet again we turn up with a cracking range of talent across the Arts. At present, British artists are on song. Many of those nominated are not only British, but world class artists.”
Phil Edgar-Jones, Director of Sky Arts, commented, “Arts and Culture in the UK and Ireland is as vibrant and exciting and popular (and fun) as it’s ever been, and there really is no other awards event that celebrates the range, diversity and sheer brilliance of Arts talent across the spectrum. I am doubly thrilled this year that the award itself has been designed by a student from the Glasgow School of Art, recognising the great work the school has done over the years.”
The South Bank Sky Arts 2015 Awards Nominees:
Dance
A Dream within a Midsummer Night’s Dream - Ballet Black
Lest We Forget - English National Ballet
The Winter’s Tale - The Royal Ballet
Opera
Die Frau Ohne Schatten - The Royal Opera House
Moses Und Aron - Welsh National Opera
Khovanskygate: A National Enquiry- Birmingham Opera Company
Literature
Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death and Brain Surgery - Henry Marsh
H is for Hawk - Helen MacDonald
Us - David Nicholls
Pop
LP1 - FKA Twigs
Dead - Young Fathers
In The Lonely Hour - Sam Smith
Film
Pride
Paddington
Under the Skin
Visual Art
Dock, Tate Britain - Phyllida Barlow
Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red - Artist Paul Cummins, installation designed by Tom Piper, Tower of London
Who Are You? Channel 4 and National Portrait Gallery - Grayson Perry
Comedy
Doll & Em - Sky Living
W1A - BBC Two
The Trip to Italy - BBC Two
TV Drama
Line of Duty, Series 2 - BBC Two
Happy Valley - BBC One
The Honourable Woman - BBC Two
Theatre
A View from the Bridge - Young Vic
King Charles III - Almeida Theatre / Wyndham’s Theatre
Henry IV - Donmar Warehouse
Classical
40 Years Young - Arditti Quartet
The Birmingham Beethoven Cycle: Symphonies 8 & 9 -City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra
Peter Maxwell Davies’ Symphony No. 10, Alla ricerca di Borromini - London Symphony Orchestra
For further information, please contact:
Sky
Ffion Williams
PR Manager, Sky Arts
ffion.williams@bskyb.com
020 7032 0599
Sky Arts
Follow us on twitter @skyarts
For images, please go to Imagenet or email Stills@bskyb.com
Notes to Editors
About The South Bank Sky Arts Awards
The glittering ceremony is hosted annually by the South Bank Show editor and presenter Melvyn Bragg, and previous winners include Harold Pinter, J. K. Rowling, Dame Judi Dench, The Who, Seamus Heaney, Tom Stoppard, Tracey Emin and Alfred Brendel.
The judges of this year’s South Bank Sky Arts Awards are Gillian Greenwood, writer and South Bank Show producer, who will act as Chair; Alex O’Connell, Arts Editor at The Times; Baz Bamigboye, Entertainment Columnist at The Daily Mail; Boyd Hilton the TV & Reviews Editor at Heat Magazine; Richard Brooks the Arts Editor at The Sunday Times; Sarah Donaldson the Arts Editor at The Observer; Matt Cain the writer & broadcaster; Hugh Montgomery the Arts Editor at The Independent on Sunday and Sarfraz Manzoor the writer & broadcaster.
The South Bank Sky Arts Awards is produced for Sky Arts by Director’s Cut Productions’ Cathy Haslam and is commissioned by Celia Taylor, Head of Non-Scripted at Sky.
About Sky
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