COAST VIBES TOP Jean Isherwood, Angophora Forest (c.1975), oil on canvas, 55cm x 70cm, Central Coast Council Collection CENTRE Hans Giese, Gums of Noraville (1982), Central Coast Council Collection BOTTOM Paul Haggith, The Printing District, Seoul, (2020) oil on linen, 122cm x 153cm
In the case of the Gosford Art Prize (30 October to 9 January), Sarah has had just a few weeks to plan the hanging and staging of entries from the 135 finalists after they were announced in mid-September. The Art Prize is a highlight of the gallery’s year and the $25,000 in prize money attracted 951 entries from around Australia. Entries range across a range of mediums from oils and acrylics to ceramics, prints, digital, sculptures and textiles. And, as with the Archibald Prize, the People’s Choice Winner is always a popular interest. Sarah is excited about other forthcoming exhibitions in 2022, too. ‘We try to present a diverse program across the year, in a range of mediums and inspired by different ideas – about being Australian and being human,’ she says. ‘We have a touring exhibition with four female performing artists, the Barbara Cleveland Artist Collective, that’s quite edgy, and will get people thinking about and making sense of the ideas in it. ‘There’s Kathryn Jeane’s exhibition Gar, of her grandmother who lived in Mangrove Mountain but had no birth certificate and no documentation of her death. It’s an unconventional exhibition about elements that made up an undocumented life: in textiles, memories from her home – ephemera that keeps her memory alive. ‘Paul Haggith is one of the most exhibited artists in the Gosford Art Prize, and has been a finalist in the Wynne and Sulman prizes. He will have a solo exhibition on the built environment, Urban Landscapes, which highlights the play of light. ‘And, of course, the Dobell Drawing Prize, an initiative of the Sir William Dobell Art Foundation, which continues to be a barometer of the remarkable vitality and changing role of drawing within contemporary art. It covers animation, collage, charcoal, ink and watercolours and features Euan Macleod’s wonderful winning work, Borderlands – Between NSW and Qld. As a curator, it no doubt helps to have once been a budding artist, too, in order to appreciate the wealth of talent that is available to regional galleries. ‘I aspired to be an artist,’ Sarah admits. ‘But after studying at the Canberra School of Art and completing a fine arts degree at ANU, I realised I was more interested in facilitating the work of those artists who are so much more talented than I am.’ Her first roles at the National Gallery of Australia, followed by stints at commercial galleries, Museums and Galleries NSW, and the Australia Council for the Arts, prepared her well for her role as curator at the Gosford Regional Gallery. facebook.com/gosfordregionalgallery centralcoast.nsw.gov.au/galleries
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