A five-strong shortlist has been revealed for Canada’s top contemporary prize, the Sobey Art Award.

Brenda Draney, Jeremy Shaw, Charles Stankievech, William Robinson and Hajra Waheed were picked by the Sobey Art Foundation and the National Gallery of Canada. Many of them produce mixed-media art and all include personal themes in their work.

The Sobey Art Award is presented annually to an outstanding Canadian artist under 40 who has exhibited in a public or private gallery in the 18 months preceding their application. The Sobey has been compared to other prestigious awards, such as the UK’s Turner Prize. The selection was made from a long-list of 25 artists, announced earlier this year.

“The work being produced in Canada these days is outstanding,” said Josée Drouin-Brisebois, Sobey Art Award chair and the National Gallery of Canada’s senior curator of contemporary art. “This year’s long-list featured a surprising number of multidisciplinary and conceptual artists, as well as artists working in traditional mediums in new and innovative ways. The artists on the long-list were all strong contenders.”

This year a total of $100,000 CAD ($76,610 in US terms) will be awarded. The top award is $50,000 CAD, with $10,000 CAD to each of the other short-listed artists, and $500 CAD to each of the other long-listed artists.

“The jury chose five artistic approaches whose work is characteristic of the frequently transdisciplinary practice,” Drouin-Brisebois said. “These artists all link the questioning of their own artistic production with the reflection of social contexts.”

On the shortlist is Jeremy Shaw (West Coast and the Yukon region), from Vancouver, BC, and currently based in Berlin, Germany. Shaw uses film, video and photography and draws on his interest in the psychedelic.

Also shortlisted is Brenda Draney (Prairies and the North). She is known for paintings based on her experiences and the relationships formed between her current hometown of Edmonton and the northern community of Slave Lake, Alberta, where she was raised. Draney was the 11th winner of the annual RBC Canadian Painting Competition, and was previously longlisted for the Sobey Art Award.

Charles Stankievech (Toronto/ Ontario) has work that varies across sculpture, film, sound pieces, installation and more.

From Québec is Hajra Waheed of Montréal, whose art consists of a personal archive from interactive installations to collage, video, sound and sculpture. In 2014 she was awarded the Victor Martyn Lynch-Staunton award for outstanding achievement as a Canadian mid-career visual artist.

The Atlantic region is represented by William Robinson of Halifax, Nova Scotia, whose work has been shown at many festivals, encompassing installation, performance, video, musical composition, sculpture and printed matter.

The Sobey Art Foundation was set up in 1981 to carry on the work of the late entrepreneur Frank H. Sobey, to collect and preserve representative examples of 19th- and 20th-century Canadian art. The Sobey Art Award was started in 2002, to broaden the remit to more recent work, and the National Gallery of Canada is now its organizing institution.

Previous winners include David Altmejd, Nadia Myre and Abbas Akhavan, among others who have gone on to international careers.

The short-listed artists’ work will be featured at the National Gallery of Canada from October 6 2016 to through February 5 2017. The winner will be announced in November 2016.