2014 Award Winners and Finalists

Jenny Orchard
WINNER - $10,000 NON-ACQUISITIVE
Essence of Birds and Lost Child in the Suburbs of Reconstruction
Watercolour, 38 x 60cm
My work explores boundaries of ontological compartmentalisation.Contemporary shifting understandings of reality, digital and genetic manipulations of animal, human, and perhaps all other life forms, as well as technologically induced hyper-reality, may be having a radical effect on our understanding of what constitutes life, and its forms.Recent discoveries in Quantum physics of the nature of time, matter and consciousness have placed new pressures and awareness’s of our place in the world. These understandings have resonance with spiritual understandings, ancient religions and mythologies. This creates an unstable ontological state, which I find an exciting place for art. It is the intersection of the creative imagination, which draws on an ever present past, an immersive and immanent reality and which can occur with no “help” from technology, and these newly emergent scientific understandings which inspire my work.
Barbara Goldin
SECOND PRIZE - $1,000 NON-ACQUISITIVE
Pulpit Rock WA
Charcoal, Crayon, Acrylic on Canvas, 76 x 76cm
I travel and camp extensively in the Australian Outback, where I sketch and paint the scenes to which I feel connected.My most recent trip was to the Great Victorian Desert in Western Australia. The land is flat with sparse vegetation and with occasional breakaways. These are erosion hills with hard rock capping.Pulpit Rock was a breakaway on the Anne Beadell Track. I was fascinated by the huge rock formation on the top of the hill that reminded me of an ancient fortress. I did a couple of drawings then climbed to the top of the hill. From there I had a spectacular view of the vast landscape.This painting of Pulpit Rock is my response to that landscape. The work is both a reflection of the place and my memory of being there.I used a mixed media of charcoal, crayon and acrylic on canvas.
Min-Woo Bang
MEMBERS CHOICE PRIZE - $1,000 NON-ACQUISITIVE
Shadow Wind
Oil on Linen, 51 x 76cm
Min Woo Bang’s surfaces, lustrously built up in oils, are both dramatic and subtle in their effect. Sometimes an under-structure reveals itself behind a small crack or running drip; these deliberate flaws and uneven textures are reminders of the artist’s ongoing interests in the processes of time, the fragility of memory and nature’s disintegration.The physical elements and forces of nature are interdependent in these atmospheric landscapes and the experience of nature’s decay and transformation is balanced by a deep, physical connection to place.Wagner Art Gallery
Elliott Nimmo
YOUNG ARTIST PRIZE - RETURN TICKET TO SEOUL
Untitled (Kim/Fellini)
Oil on Canvas, 130 x 90cm
Untitled (Kim/Fellini) is part of a body of work that explores news and advertising media imagery. North Korea’s engagement with the West exists only within culture production – or culture absorption. The Dear Leader, like his late father, Kim Jong-il, has a passion for Hollywood, high fashion brands and German cars – and here we see Kim seeking out the luxury of the Italian Riviera, personified by Bianca Balti, a model from a Dolce &Gabbana 2012 campaign. Lastly, there is the slice of lime. Throughout history, fruit has long been rich in metaphor, and it has come to represent luxury, status and sexuality. And yet, these images are as empty as any other image – plucked out of the slipstream of the 24-hour news cycle to be re-contextualised within the framework of art.