Liverpool Art Prize judge Laura Davis runs through the five short-listed artists showing their work at an exhibition opening today

BACK when Liverpool was preparing to host the Turner Prize in 2007 a group of the city’s art lovers got together to campaign for a local nomination.

But in researching those who would make the grade, they realised something important – Liverpool artists are simply too high calibre for the city not to have its own award.

So, husband and wife team Ian and Minako Jackson, of website Artinliverpool.com, began the hard work of setting up the inaugural Liverpool Art Prize.

Four years on and it has become a firmly established part of the city’s annual visual art diary. This year, it moves from Novas Contemporary Urban Centre to Metal – Calderstones ex-pupil and Southbank Centre artistic director Jude Kelly’s arts hub in renovated buildings on Edge Hill Station.

“The Liverpool Art Prize is about acknowledging and celebrating the city’s outstanding artists and their achievements, to support individual artists in developing their practice as well as offering something for young and emerging artists to aspire to,” says Ian Jackson.

“The short-listed artists are amazingly creative and innovative, although at different stages of their careers they are all well established and exhibiting internationally, they have put together a fascinating exhibition.”

The first prize is chosen by a panel of judges, which as well as myself comprises Juan Cruz, head of Arts at John Moores University’s Art & Design Academy; National Museums Liverpool’s director of art galleries Reyahn King; Nicki McCubbing, who was on last year’s short-list; The Bluecoat’s exhibitions curator Sara-Jayne Parsons; Paul Hylan of Duncan Sheard Glass and Jay Mitton, business manager at Arthur Diamond Design.

As well as the £2,000 prize money, the winner will receive the opportunity to exhibit at the Walker Art Gallery at a later date. But just as important is the People’s Choice Award of £1,000, voted for by visitors to the exhibition.

“We feel it is important that the public participated in the nomination process,” explains Jackson. “The artists appreciate the support of their peers and community.”

The short-listed artists are. . .

Gina Czarnecki:

“My work is generally developed in collaboration with biotechnologists, computer programmers, dancers and sound artists, and is informed by human relationships to image, disease, evolution, genetic research, and by advanced technologies of image production.

“I’ve compiled a selection of the documentation of a wide range of works that have generally been large scale video installations to give an overview of range and development rather than present one work.”

David Jacques:

Multimedia artist Jacques’ work deals with the concept of identity. The piece he has created for this show is based on a fictitious character – an autodidact who finds himself returning to two sites where he once worked.

Captured on CCTV, he gets detained at the Port of Liverpool, at which point “a voice from the supernatural intervenes”.

James Quin:

“My practice focuses mainly on drawing and painting,which I am convinced still have something to say about our experience of finding meaning in the world.

“The images shown at Metal have been created in response to Edge Hill Station and address some of the narratives – apocryphal and real – that have been attached to the station and attempts to present a body of work that examines these narratives in a place where past, present and future collide.”

Paul Rooney:

“I currently make text, sound, video and film works, which often deal with the difficulty of attempting to represent historical events in anything other than a fragmentary way. All of the works use or reference narrative forms such as short stories, songs, audio guides and letters.

“La Décision Doypac’, the work I am showing, has the starting point of a real memoir of Paris in 1968, but quickly veers off into song, fiction and bad revolutionary poetry.”

Emily Speed:

“My work is a mix of drawing, sculpture, installation and bookbinding. I am interested in architecture and the way that people are very influenced by the buildings they spend time in.

“For the exhibition, the installation includes a large wooden tower overlooking several smaller sculptures of rocks, pieces of earth and my hand. Between the two is a drawing of an abandoned landscape off the coast of Nagasaki in Japan. The piece was inspired by a short Kafka story, The Burrow, and while I was making it I was thinking about how sometimes the harder we try to hold on to something, the quicker it slips away.”

THE Liverpool Art Prize exhibition at Metal, Edge Hill Station, runs until July 10 with the winners announced at an awards ceremony on June 30.