Every year, St. Joost School of Art & Design awards residency prizes to talented makers who can use a one-month working period to develop new work at two special locations. The Van Gogh AiR selected Anoek Mensink, a graduate of the Art & Research Den Bosch study programme, as the lucky winner to work at Vincent van GoghHuis in Zundert.
Ron Dirven (director) and Eva Geene (curator) of the Vincent Van GoghHuis visited the candidates on 28 June: “The candidates’ work was diverse and of a good standard. After careful consideration, the jury made a decision. The Van Gogh AiR Prize goes to an artist who looks closely at the world around her. Anoek is extremely versatile and knows how to use various disciplines. She achieves great effect with simple means. We were struck by her enterprising, idiosyncratic approach. This combination holds the promise that in Zundert, too, she will respond uniquely to Van Gogh’s birthplace and, through interventions there too, be able to make people look at their surroundings in a different way, shifting their perspective from the sky to the ground, from the ‘Bossche’ wingnut to the Zundert acacia.
