Art Vinyl reveals shortlist for best cover artwork of 2016

Art Vinyl has revealed the shortlist for its 12th annual awards given to the year’s best sleeve artwork. The 50-strong list of nominees for Best Art Vinyl 2016 has been chosen by a panel of music industry members and previous award winners, and the winners will voted for online by the public.

Featured on the shortlist are Shura’s Nothing’s Real cover by Louise Pomeroy, Mat Maitland, Big Active and Andrew Whitton; The Wytches’ All Your Happy Life cover by Samuel Gull; Robert Beatty’s artwork for DrugDealer’s The End of Comedy; and Andrew Savage’s artwork for his band Parquet Courts’ album Human Performance.

Other shortlisted artists include Jonathan Barnbrook for David Bowie’s Blackstar; Quentin Blake for James Blake’s The Colour in Anything; Charlotte Delarue for Justice’s album Woman; and Deana Lawson for Blood Orange’s Free Town Sound.

The Best Art Vinyl award 2015 was given to London-based graphic design studio The Creative Corporation for its sleeve design for David Gilmour’s album Rattle That Lock. Over 16,000 participated in that year’s public vote. Previous winners also include Dan Hillier for his Falls illustration for Royal Blood’s self-titeld debut album, and Fleet Foxes’ debut album artwork put together by Bella Union Records, which used a detail from a 1559 painting by Dutch Renaissance painter Pieter Bruegel the Elder.

The panel for this year includes Rob Crane, who designed The Cribs’ Men’s Needs, Women’s Needs, Whatever cover and Gerard Saint from Big Active, who art directed the cover for White Lies’ Big TV with Markus Karlsson, using paintings by Michael Kagan.

Art Vinyl founder Andrew Heeps says that “quite simply, record cover art has never been so relevant”.

The final winners will be announced on 5 January 2017, with an exhibition at The Hari Hotel, London.