Roger Pailhas Prize
Paying tribute to the Marseille-based gallerist, known for his daring and innovative booths within the most prestigious art fairs, Art-o-rama organizes since 2015 the Roger Pailhas Prize awarded by a committee of collectors and art professionals.
It rewards the best curatorial project by reimbursing the costs of participation at the fair.
Roger Pailhas
Roger Pailhas inaugurated his first gallery in Marseille (Cours Julien area) in 1986 with a group show that gathered Daniel Buren, Gilbert Della-Nocce, Toni Grand, Jannis Kounellis, Sol Le Witt, Mario Merz, and Bruce Nauman.
In 1990, he opened a second space in Paris with a solo show by John Knight. In 1996 the Marseille-based gallery moved to the Vieux-Port (old harbour central area) into a 1,000sqm space. He closed the Parisian gallery in 1998 and decided to focus on Marseille instead.
In 1996 he created Art Dealers, an original contemporary art fair where he gathered, within the gallery’s space, 8 new international galleries each year.
Meanwhile, he participated in some of the most prestigious international art fairs such as Art Basel, Fiac, and the Armory Show, where he offered, with the complicity of his artists, among the most ambitious and adventurous booths. Samuel Keller himself said that Roger Pailhas’ booths inspired the Statement section of Art Basel. The gallery and Art Dealers ceased to exist when Roger Pailhas passed away in 2005.
2025 laureate : Season 4 Episode 6, London
David Attwood
Season 4 Episode 6 presents new works by Perth/Boorloo based artist David Attwood. Known for assembling deft combinations of contemporary commodities, the works on show continue Attwood’s interests in housework, its labour conditions and the sculptural potential of its associated appliances, technologies and consumables. Particular to this presentation for Art-o-rama is the globally iconic Red Bull energy drink, which is used to explore ideas around energy, productivity, performance and work.
For More Work For Mother, a suite of free standing sculptures, the Red Bull can label has been reproduced and affixed to discarded vacuum cleaners rods. Resembling aluminum cans that have been impossibly stretched upwards, the chrome rods stand scattered throughout the exhibition space.
In the wall-based assemblage Untitled, a Scrub Daddy ‘caddy’ (a peculiar spin-off product of the well-known smiling Scrub Daddy sponge) is fixed to a pane of glass. The cavities of the protruding caddy’s ‘eyes’ have been filled with powdered taurine, the active ingredient in Red Bull. As if its pupils were dilated, the caddy’s face appears in a state of frenzy.
Through wall-based and freestanding sculpture, Attwood playfully yet poignantly conflates the auratic qualities of Red Bull with products of domestic maintenance, pitting the idealisation of energy consumption against the realities of its expenditure.
Laureates
2024 : Zyrland Zoiropa, Berlin, with Liam Allan and Burkhard Beschow
2023 : Galeria Mascota, Mexico, with Michael Ross
2022 : Gilles Drouault galerie, Paris, with Jason Dodge
2021 : Exo Exo, Paris, with Gaspar Willmann
2019 : VEDA, Florence, with Dominique White
