Liedeke Kruk to receive Berry Koedam Award 2024
Press release - Wednesday 23 October 2024
Kunstinstituut Melly, Rotterdam, The Netherlands
The Berry Koedam Award honors creators who visually document
artworks and exhibitions, as well as art events and artistic communities in
the Netherlands. This is one of the awards that Kunstinstituut Melly
launched in 2020. This awards program was designed to celebrate the
institution's thirtieth anniversary. This year, the Berry Koedam Award is
made possible by the Mondriaan Fund.
We are proud to announce that photographer Liedeke Kruk has been
selected as the recipient of this year's edition of the Berry Koedam
Award. Together with Marlies Crooijmans, the winner of the Maker
Behind the maker Award, Liedeke Kruk will be celebrated during an
awards ceremony at Kunstinstituut Melly on Thursday November 28,
- Both winners will receive a cash prize of €10,000 this year, twice
the amount of previous years.
About Liedeke Kruk
Liedeke Kruk is an artist and imagemaker based in Tilburg. Much of her
work focuses on capturing portraits of artists behind the scenes, during
exhibition preparations, or at opening events and dinner receptions. Her
photography stands out for its authenticity, which is central to Kruk’s
practice. The power of her portraits lies in the palpable relationship
between photographer and subject, offering a raw, unstaged glimpse into
the world behind the artworks. She studied drawing and textile art in
Tilburg. Her work has been published in various books and magazines
and has been exhibited widely in the Netherlands and abroad, including
in De Pont, Tilburg; and SMAK, Ghent.
About the jury
The jury members for the Berry Koedam Award 2024 were Matthew
Antezzo, artist, producer and former head of Art & Culture at Polaroid;
Marieke Wiegel, cultural advisor and director of Foundation Grote Kerk
Breda; and Stacii Samidin, photographer and visual anthropologist. The
jury was chaired by Gabi Ngcobo, director of Kunstinstituut Melly.
The jury has chosen Liedeke Kruk for the 2024 Berry Koedam Award in
recognition of her ongoing series of the art scene, portraits of artists,
curators, gallery owners and other figures of the art world. Kruk's
understated project has spanned several decades. The jury recognizes
her photographs for their immediacy and intimacy. As part of the
community around the De Pont Museum in Tilburg, Liedeke Kruk was
able to find herself with many international figures from the art world.
From this body of work the book ‘Portraits’ was published in 2010. Her
photographs and polaroids are unstaged and with the harsh contrasts
between light and shadow, the overexposure and the sometimes greenish
background reinforce the vulnerable and volatile character of the
captured moment. While photographing, Kruk is always close to her
subjects. Her pictures are authentic, intimate and offer a glimpse that
has the effect of historicising a recent period from a unique point of
view.
These qualities in her photographs, as well as her under-recognized
continuing work, and after having been a finalist in 2 prior iterations of
the juried award, led this jury to decide to grant the award to Liedeke
Kruk.
Kruk was selected as the winner through a process overseen by
Kunstinstituut Melly, in which museum professionals, visual artists, and
independent curators nominated imagemakers who creatively document
the contemporary art scene in the Netherlands
About the Berry Koedam Award
The Berry Koedam Award recognizes imagemakers whose outstanding
documentation in the art field has helped bring visibility to the work of
other artists and art institutions. Previous winners of the award are
Dustin Thierry (2021), Jannes Linders (2022), and Sander van Wettum
(2023).
The 2024 edition will mark the fourth and final edition of the Berry
Koedam Award series. However, we plan to continue celebrating and
highlighting the work of imagemakers through a new award series—
more information will be shared soon.
About Berry Koedam
Berry Koedam is known for her broad commitment as a gallery owner
and many collaborations in the (Rotterdam) art world. Born into an
artistic family and trained as a visual artist, Koedam was given a broad
foundation, after which she started the RAM gallery in 1986, then still a
living room gallery on the ‘s Gravendijkwal in Rotterdam. With the
founding of the gallery, she stopped her own practice as an artist. The
following year, she also started working as a curator at STEK, an artists'
initiative she cofounded. In the 1990s, the gallery moved to another
location where larger sculptures and installations could be shown. In
1994, the ramfoundation was founded, which allowed Koedam to break
open the restrictive idea of a gallery and create more engagement with
supporters through lectures and support programmes.
About the Mondriaan Fund
The Mondriaan Fund is the public fund for visual art and heritage in the
Netherlands and the Caribbean part of the Kingdom. It contributes to the
development of artists, curators, and critics as well as to the realization
of projects and activities of museums, heritage institutions, art venues,
galleries and commissioners at home and abroad. In addition, the fund is
responsible for the Dutch entry to the Venice Biennale, organizes the
Prix de Rome and funds prizes that promote talent in, among others,
traditional crafts, such as the Maker Behind The Maker Award and the
Berry Koedam Award.