Alexander McAllister Award

In an increasingly individualised world structured on competitive and adversarial ideologies, it seems the art-world is becoming complicit, rather than resisting and maintaining independence from the industry/consumer/entertainment model.
What we are seeing is more art prizes and competitions, fewer paths to practice that do not pass the art managerial gate-keepers, greater focus on star status in international (or local) art circuses, art valued chiefly as a community development tool and as a catalyst for economic growth in the so called “creative” industries.
While this is what we are SEEING, there are many artists, groups and networks, with practices outside the prevailing orthodoxy, whose premises for work exclude them from both public largess and public discussion.
It continues to be vital for this work to have a “presence” as we negotiate our current understandings and consider options for the future. Not just a seat at the table, but a role in creating it.

As we enter the competitive grant application season, and experience the pressure to tailor our practice to "guidelines”, we might think of Alexander McAllister.

Following is an extract from Circa Art Magazine.

"The 1986 Alexander McAllister Memorial Award for Greatness

Call for Submissions
The Committee of the Alexander McAllister Memorial Award seeks submissions from suitably disqualified Artists for The 1986 Alexander McAllister Award For Greatness. The McAllister Award for Greatness is awarded on an annual basis to an Artist who, in the previous year, displayed the utmost fortitude, resilience, and audacity of vision in their desire to resist the forces of mediocrity, banality, and officialdom. The successful applicant will have showcased the highest level of passion and ferocity in respect of a creatively defiant submission, which they must have deliberately failed, in the previous year, to obtain. No material reward or financial gain attaches to the McAllister Award; it consists solely of affection and admiration bestowed in the spirit of its founder, the late Alexander McAllister.
Successful candidates will have resisted bravely the urge to succeed, borne their ensuing failure stoically, seeing in the failure to gain disingenuous offers of financial nourishment an opportunity to subvert the cultural hierarchy and elevate premeditated failure to the art form it is capable of being.

Submission Guidelines:
* The Award is made retrospectively and on an annual basis. It is open to all artists who, in the previous year, have failed in an attempt to obtain a major grant or award. Submitters are asked to familiarise themselves with previous Award holders and acquaint themselves with the high standards of failure expected in terms of originality, contempt for bureaucracy, and contribution to the field of artistic autonomy.
* Submissions can be in any style or format but must be combative in nature, degenerate in character, and sincerely made.
* All failures must be in respect of officially recognised grants or awards; unsuccessful submissions to unrecognised bodies will not be considered. Proof of application should be included with submissions. Shortlistings are accepted and encouraged as this further subverts official power structures.
* The Award holder's laurel wreath must be returned after a period of one year. Limited edition, plastic replicas are available to all submitters; a modest contribution to cover overheads is encouraged but not compulsory.
* Submitters may freely contact committee members to discuss proposals, receive tips and generally converse in a friendly and civilised manner.
* Deadline for submissions is 31st December 1985. Send to: McAllister Memorial Award, Greatness House, 31 West Great George's Street, Dublin 1, Ireland.

Previous McAllister Award Winners
1982 - Amanda Pentuply for her loss of a 1981 grant of £750. The convoluted and at times dazzling array of interconnected references and recommendations in Bias impressed the Adjudicating Panel immensely. Defiantly titled, meticulously documented, this was a virtuoso display of partiality. Pentuply's in-depth exposition of pedagogy, her detailed elucidation of hierarchal fidelity in the polluted marriage of career advancement and capital capture laid down a marker for future failures.
1983 - The Award went to submissions stalwart Constance Slacklustre. Never short-listed for an official grant or award, probably never even considered, the Panel gave her the Award in recognition of the quality and longevity of her despair. In a decade and a half of failure, amounting to losses in the region of £10,000, she missed yet again, in 1982, an award of £1,000 and was cited by the committee "for her loyalty to loss...her commitment to all things redundant." Her many years toiling in the wilderness of bureaucracy were "a baroque music of repetition, an inspiring and unique voice in a deafening jungle of achievement...a poignant and unanswered counterpoint." Something she never failed to deliver, year after year, was her devotional mantra Routine bereavement.”

More winners, full text and details about Alexander can be found on the CIRCA site.

Good luck with your submissions!