The Glen Dimplex Artists Award, sponsored by the Irish-based company Glen Dimplex in association with the Irish Museum of Modern Art, is designed to mark a significant level of achievement or development in the work and practice of exhibiting artists. This annual exhibition of works by the artists shortlisted for the award brings together new works and earlier pieces closely related to the work for which they are nominated.

Four artists have been shortlisted for this year’s award. Matthew Barney, described by the New York Times as ” the most important American artist of his generation”, is best known for his ‘Cremaster’ film series. His slow moving and hypnotic films, which are accompanied by sculptures, photographs and drawings, manipulate different theatrical and cinematic genre to produce works of great richness and complexity. Richard Billingham’s photographs present a hard hitting, warts-and-all portrait of his family and the urban environment around his home and constitute a fascinating portrait of his life – at once, tender, funny and melancholic. He has recently completed a number of video works and a series of urban landscapes taken around his home in the North East of England.

Elizabeth Magill is a painter of great versatility and inventiveness, whose work has always drawn on a wide range of visual sources. While she has often integrated photographic materials and processes into her painting, her primary concern has always been an exploration of painting itself as a medium. Her most recent body of work is a typically idiosyncratic investigation of the traditions of landscape painting, via a witty parody of the landscapes of the Romantic period. Susan Philipsz’ work deals with the spatial properties of sound and with the relationships between sound and architecture. She is interested primarily in the emotive and psychological properties of sound, and how it can be used as a device to alter individual consciousness. She has used sound, and more recently song, as a medium in public spaces to interject through the ambient noises of the everyday in public spaces.

The Award was won by Matthew Barney. The exhibition is accompanied by a publication, with texts by Annie Fletcher and Caoimhin MacGiolla Leith (price £5.00 €6.34).