Williamstown Festival Contemporary Art Prize
April 3 - 13, 2008
Williamstown Festival Contemporary Art Prize This award is recognised nationally for showcasing innovation and excellence in the visual arts and annually attracts hundreds of high quality entries from across Australia. This free public exhibition features artists selected by our expert panel of judges.
Non-Acquisitive Prizes $3000 Open Award $1000 2D Award $1000 3D Award sponsored by Williams Real Estate $500 Local Artist Award sponsored by Williams Real Estate $500 Peoples Choice Award sponsored by Reid Consultants Highly Commended Awards Fundere Studios - $250 bronze casting New North - $220 digital print to canvas Greenwich Gallery - $150 framing/art supplies
Judging Panel
David Hurlston, Curator Australian Art Exhibitions, National Gallery of Victoria Donald Williams, Co-director of Global Art Projects Geoffrey Ricardo, leading Melbourne artist and lecturer at Victorian College of the Arts
Curator / Project Co-ordinator Ken Wong
Sponsored & supported by Williamstown Summer Festival Ltd Hobsons Bay City Council The Substation Arts Centre Williams Real Estate Toyota Community Spirit Prospect Wines Reid Consultants Fundere Studios New North Greenwich Gallery Watch Arts Artist Liaison & Graphic Design Sandra Kiriacos, Watch Arts www.watcharts.com.au Special thanks to Steve Blakebrough & the volunteers at The Substation Front Cover: All images are details from works by; Top row L-R Marika Borlase, Hannah Scott- Stevenson, Kate Winterton, Gloria Stern, Claire Busuttil Bridge bottom row L-R Debbie Hill, Ben Sheers, Drasko Boljevic, Juliet Walsh, Merryn J Trevethan, Narinda Cook.
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Message from
Lynne Kosky, MP Minister for the Arts Member for Altona
It is my great pleasure to support the Williamstown Festival Contemporary Art Prize. The Art Prize exhibition is an outstanding showcase of contemporary art in the western suburbs. Since their establishment these awards have steadily grown in stature, entries are now received from across the country and the awards are recognised nationally. I am thrilled to officially open the Williamstown Festival Contemporary Art Prize, because it is important to recognise creativity locally and additionally because this is an opportunity to combine my roles as Member for Altona and as Victorian Minister for the Arts. The Hobsons Bay area is home to a vibrant arts scene that draws inspiration from our beautiful coastal environment, the urban and industrial character of the area and our culturally rich and diverse community. The strong representation of local artists short-listed for this year’s awards highlights the dynamic creativity of our region. I congratulate all of the participating artists, the Festival Committee and commend everyone involved in bringing us the 2008 Williamstown Festival Contemporary Art Prize.
Lynne Kosky, MP Minister for the Arts
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Judging Panel David Hurlston
Curator Australian Art Exhibitions National Gallery of Victoria David Hurlston is currently employed by the National Gallery of Victoria as Curator, Australian Art Exhibitions, a position he has held since February 2002. He has previously been employed by the NGV as Program Coordinator from 1999 until 2002 and Access Gallery Curator from 1993 until 1999. In 1985 David completed a Bachelor of Art in Fine Art at RMIT majoring in ceramic sculpture and in 1991 undertook post-graduate study in art curatorship at the University of Melbourne. He has curated a number of exhibitions for the NGV including, most recently, Deborah Halpern: Angel (2006) and Geoffrey Bartlett (2007). He serves on the City of Maribyrnong’s Art Advisory Panel, is a member of Arts Project Australia’s Exhibitions Committee and a Board Member of the NETS Victoria Board of Management. David is a resident of Williamstown. www.ngv.vic.gov.au
Curator Ken Wong
Geoffrey Ricardo
Donald Williams
Melbourne artist and lecturer
Director of Global Art Projects
Geoffrey studied printmaking at the Chisolm Institute of Technology and graduated from Monash University, obtaining the Graduate Diploma in Fine Art Printmaking. In both 1986 and 1988 he was awarded the Mornington Peninsula Arts Council Aquisitive Print Prize, and in 1989, the City of Doncaster Aquisitive Print Prize. He has regular solo exhibitions in Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide, Brisbane and Perth and has participated in numerous group exhibitions in Australia and internationally. His paintings, prints and sculptures are represented at the Australian National Gallery in Canberra, the Art Gallery of New South Wales, the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery in Tasmania, the Holmes A’Court Collection in Western Australia, and other regional galleries and institutions. His work is also in many private collections and is represented by Australian Galleries in Melbourne and Sydney. Sessional lecturer at Monash University for seven years and guest lecturer at Victorian College of the Arts, R.M.I.T and P.I.T. Residencies at Canberra school of Art and U.W.A. www.geoffreyricardo.com
Donald’s background is in arts education having worked with the National Gallery of Victoria and the Tate Gallery, London. In 1997 he co-founded Global Art Projects which has been involved in a host of projects including exhibition management at the Venice Biennale for the Australia Council for the Arts on numerous occasions and also provides consultancy advice and services for numerous public, corporate and private collections. Global Art Projects also produced the exhibitions component of the Commonwealth Games Cultural Festival in 2006. He is also a freelance writer and contributor to various publications and has published several books on art, design and architecture. www.gap.net.au
This is my second year as curator with the Williamstown Festival Contemporary Art Prize and I must say working on this project has been a significant experience that has helped restore my faith in humanity and what human beings can accomplish working together with generosity and humility for a common goal. The exhibition features 87 artists whose works run the gamut of life in the modern world exploring contemporary themes including global warming and consumerism as well as more ageless aspects of the human experience, like the need to love and be loved, the light and darkness of the human soul, the beauty, wonder and contradictions of the world we all inhabit and the larger questions of where we are going and what does it all mean? Following the recent uplifting Earth Hour event which saw a multitude of cities across the world voluntarily switch off their electric lighting in a both symbolic and practical gesture promoting a unified and active stance on global warming, it was in fact quite depressing to sit down and watch the SBS television program The Planet which painted such a daunting picture that it made humanities situation seem hopeless. However, that point of view ignores the spirit and enterprise that , unique to all of the creatures that exist on this planet, we as human beings possess. The same creativity and ingenuity and power of community working together that has put us in this horrible situation, is also available to push the pendulum back the other way! The Williamstown Festival Contemporary Art Prize is an example of what people can achieve through the application of common desire and energy. The festival itself is run by a committee of volunteers whose only motivation is to put back some part of the sense of community that is so lost to so many of us in our busy lives through an event that creates relationships and connection. The venue for the art prize is also run by a dedicated and determined group of local people who have doggedly set about reclaiming the magnificent but for many years derelict building of The Substation as an invaluable resource and asset to the community. The art prize is also sponsored by local council and business seeking to support the development of local culture, our esteemed judges, who give of their time and expertise so generously, and of course, by the artists, whose insight, inspiration and phenomenal quality of practice makes the art prize the great project that it is. On a personal note. I would like to thank and pay tribute to my predecessor, local artist and curator Tania Blackwell, whose vision and hard work over the past several years set the course for the tremendous growth in stature and reputation of the art prize. I would also like to thank and congratulate all of the participating artists and in particular, you the viewing public, for your support for this magnificent project.
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Image this page: Cyrus Wai-Kuen Tang. Image next page: Sarina Lirosi.
Exhibiting Artists Click on artists name to view page
Greg Ades Robin Astley Amber Baiguerra-Daly Leanne Baker Craig Barrett Robyn Base Christopher Beaumont Sharon Billinge Terence Bogue Drasko Boljevic Paul Borg Marika Borlase David Brooks Kerry Buckland-Lewis Claire Busuttil Bridge Heather Clugston Narinda Cook Wendy Coram Dale Cox Lada Dedić Mark Dober Tommaso Durante Tanja George Erika Gofton Andrew Goodman Julie Goodwin Andrew Green Colleen Guiney Trudi Harley
Jason Haufe Debbie Hill Janne Kearney Sue Kneebone Markus Kunschak Alison Langley Stone Lee Nancy Lehet Carolyn Lewens Jan Lewis Sarina Lirosi Andrew May Mark McCarthy Danielle McCarthy Darren McGinn Peter Mclisky Arna Meldrum Nadia Mercuri Ben Millar Shay Minster Johanna Morrison Mike Nicholls William Nuttall Carlo Pagoda Scott Pearce Susanne Pearce Evan Pierce Robyn Rayner Chris Rowe
Lara Russell Nina Ryan Judith Sackville-O’Donnell Bill Sampson Hannah Scott-Stevenson Annemarie Schweitzer Ben Sheers Julie Shiels Nina Smart Neil Stanyer Gloria Stern Amber Stuart James Tapscott James Taylor Geoff Tolchard Andrew Trahair Merryn J Trevethan Bibi Viro Cyrus Wai-Kuen Tang Liz Walker Carmel Wallace Juliet Walsh Heather Winter Kate Winterton Oleh Witer Katy Woodroffe Chris Wootton Daniel Worth Alan Young 5
Greg Ades Williamstown Festival Contemporary Art Prize
Over recent years my work has explored the nature of the Australian landscape and the concept of individuals space within that environment. Within these themes I maintain a humanistic fascination for structures and places that induce a sense of isolation. The central motivation remains that of the solitary, the individual perception of ones own experience within a specific environment, whether this be urban and architectural or outback and remote.
Daintree I Oil on linen, 2006, 92 x 137cm $9000
Robin Astley “The power of toys is not about regression or infantilism. It is the recognition of possibility. Toys are symbols that have a figurative power to embody thoughts and emotions… a solidified concept, a journey from wishspace to reality…to play with a toy is to enter a representational space.”1 1 Pheonix, W, Plastic Culture, Kodansha International, 2006, p.9.
Don’t take your guns to town son leave your guns at home Acrylic & ink on paper, 2007-2008, 150 x 150cm $1400
Amber Baiguerra-Daly I spent my childhood growing up in a small western district town where vast uninhabited spaces were the norm. Rush hour didn’t apply. Spaces where you can breathe in the fresh air and listen to the sound of the birds and the trees swaying in the wind were a daily reality, tranquility was not a goal, it was all around you. I remember this when I am sitting in the middle of a crowded city on a busy weekday morning, watching blank, tired, stressed faces on the way to work, to and from meetings, colliding frequently and desperate for enough space to walk through congested footpaths. I don’t know any of these potential subjects passing by me yet as I sit and breathe in this madness the contrast between this and what I grew up with is compelling. Within this desperate rush to gain financial freedom and striving for happiness the occasional blur of light and brilliant color, which gives hope to these noisy unknowns, grabs my attention and transports me back into the past. This is what I strive to paint.
Leanne Baker, Heather Clugston & Annemarie Schweitzer Concerns have been raised locally and globally about the ecological footprint of the single use plastic shopping bag. For the last four years our installations have involved the use of plastic shopping bags filled with waste plastic. These same bags have provided the basic materials for each of our installations, with only some minor additions for repair; the damaged bags then become part of the fill. By using this material we aim to emphasise the idea that a single use product is both impractical and wasteful and constitutes an environmental hazard in disposal and or destruction. Cell no 5 Plastic shopping bags, 2008, 84 x 130 x 130cm $2800
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Urban Delights, Acrylic, ink & pastel on canvas, 2007, 91 x 150cm, $1900
Craig Barrett
Represented by Stephen McLaughlan Gallery
Two Boats Oil on linen 54 x 50.5cm, 2007 $3300
Robyn Base
Williamstown Festival Contemporary Art Prize
I try to make art that is “felt” – more than ever we need to be led by the heart and less by the head.
Icebergs are ephemeral beings, constantly being re-sculpted by the elements and, like all things of nature, in a permanent state of change. In this drawing there is an eerie visceral quality to the ice, like teeth and bones, or an almost fleshy ‘meatiness’. This serves to emphasise the parallels between the transience of both ice and flesh. For like ice, the Body, too, is subject to change and timebased transformations.
Skin Deep Ink on Paper, 2007 70 x 100cm $1150
Christopher Beaumont
Represented by Eva Breuer Art Dealer, NSW
Vanitas Still Life with Lavendar Oil on linen, 2007 51 x 61cm $4500
Sharon Billinge Hands grab, grasp and clasp, they give and take, coax and cajole, they sign our names, leave fingerprints, itch and scratch, hold, push and pull, they stroke and poke, prod and manipulate. To a large extent they are the instruments that shape our own destinies. Cradled explores the delicate balance between strength and gentleness. These hands are striving but are constrained. They cradle the hope of their own future happiness and strain against the confines of the edge of the picture plane in an attempt to take that hope further.
Cradled Oil on board, 2008 120 x 120cm $1400
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Terence Bogue Williamstown Festival Contemporary Art Prize
I am intrigued by façade, costume, uniform and adornment - their role in perception and prejudice. How social mores change through time and place and culture. Where models are cast out and outcasts become models. Where restraint produces freedom, yet freedom is restrained. Where nudity conceals and dress reveals. How social circles wind through circus and burlesque, craving the very passion they condemn. Within all this there is ambiguous beauty, structure, geometry and enigma - bound up in imagined eroticism where the eye is far quicker than the brain, yet it kindles lasting fantasy. Showgirl Also Photograph – Type C Print, 2007 110 x 78cm $990
Drasko Boljevic This work is an eclectic mixture, fashioning renaissance work with a comic art approach. Inspiration has been drown from the old masters with passion for modernism shinning through with vibrant colours and the use of modern techniques.
Children playing with dice. Homage to Murillo Synthetic Polymer Airbrush, 2007 152.5 x 122cm $4000
Paul Borg This painting is not a particular street or suburb, its an invented estate from my mind, mental observations that have become part of how I visualize certain types of new housing estates. By doing this it will allow the viewer to make their own association to a place they might know or a place they might dream of being part of or despise.
Suburbian Dream Estate Oil & acrylic on hessian, 2008 123 x167cm $6000
Marika Borlase
Represented by Flinders Lane Gallery Through the layering of images from different contexts and time frames, I investigate the terrain of collective culture. These works ask questions about the meaning of being an individual in a world bombarded with images of success, from the subtly personal to the overtly commercial. Flat areas of colour are deployed in the non naturalistic mode that television and printed media uses to indicate a hallucinatory interlude, further embellished with a layer of airbrushed grids, pixels or patterns to add to the sense of vibrancy and detail. Colours borrowed from the make-believe world of comics or decorating colour scheme charts deliver an ambivalent setting that is as radiant as it is disorientating.
When I grow up - Williamstown Botanic Gardens Acrylic on board, 2007, 120 x 120cm $6250
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David Brooks
Kerry Buckland-Lewis
Williamstown Festival Contemporary Art Prize
Liz Oil on canvas, 2008 60 x 50cm $1100
This work examines aspects of contemporary Western cultures relationship to the environment. Using media which is usually associated with mass production and mass culture, it explores the cultural mediation of nature. The work takes decorative floral motifs extracted from nature and employs them as emblems of this cultural mediation.
Transient Laser cut steel, 21 pieces, chrome, 2008 Dimensions variable Small $50 each, Medium $70 each, Large $90 each
Claire Busuttil Bridge What do you make of me? I sit here clothed yet naked. Heart beating yet mortal. There’s no place to go. No escape from Death. So I hold her in my arms like the baby I lost, cradled and precious. She will take me when the moment comes and there is no escape. Nowhere else to turn. I see you who looks at me and I see myself. You and I both know I can not leave here. I can only surrender. Lay myself down. From there I shall disappear.
The Inner Room Oil on canvas, 2008 35 x 28cm $2500
Narinda Cook “Well, what about sitting down and having our tea? I’m afraid you’ll have to stand, Wobbly man, but you won’t mind that will you?” “Not a bit – I can easily wobble round the table and help myself,” said the Wobbly Man, and he reached out to take a large piece of cake. “He wobbles and gobbles, He sways to and fro,” began Noddy, but Big Ears frowned at him.1 Storytelling and play can stimulate imagination and creative thinking. A toy can ignite play in children and adult alike, reminding us that play is integral to the formation and ongoing creative and intellectual thinking. “The less archetypal a toy is, the more possibilities it leaves for a child’s imagination.”2 Rahima Baldwin Dancy refers to a story by Paul Gallico called Love of The Seven Dolls. “....and monsieur Nicholas gave her an oddly turned piece of wood that was not one but many shapes. ‘For your first born,’ he said . ‘it is a toy I have made for him that is not any, yet still all toys, for in his imagination, when he plays with it, it will be whatever he sees in it, or wishes it to be.’” 1. 2. 3.
Blyton, Enid, You are a good friend Noddy, Sampson Low, Marston and co., London, 1958 Rahima Baldwin Dancy, You Are Your Childs First Teacher, Celestial Arts, California, 1989, p.161 Ibid., p. 161
Crimson, Polystyrene, fibreglass, steel & flocking, 2007, 140 x 85 x 85cm, $7500
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Wendy Coram Williamstown Festival Contemporary Art Prize
I focus on creating ambiguous narratives, often using women, children and animals in my work. Memory operates more through imaginative associations than logic and hope to stir reflection in the viewer. I attempt to explore tensions such as innocence and a sense of foreboding, vulnerability and heroism and similar.
Black Dog Oil on canvas, 2007 71.5 x 66cm $650
Dale Cox
Dianne Tanzer Gallery, Melbourne; Paddington Fine Art Gallery, Sydney; Johnson Gallery, Perth ‘Infrastructure as ready made sculpture’ This series of paintings explores notions of landscape, and specific areas of land as finite independent entities. By isolating an area of land according to my own arbitrary rules, I seek to indicate a formal, sculptural aspect of the everyday that might be overlooked in a continuous traditional vista. Tilting the chosen ‘land object’ further emphasizes the sculptural aspects of everyday spaces and places, once freed of its everyday context. Perhaps a kind of formalism, found in the everyday Utilitarian streetscape. Crossing (Whitehorse Road) Acrylic on canvas, 2008 101 x 77cm $3300
Lada Dedić The process and history of knitting is inherently female. Meditative and repetitive in Nature; it leads itself to further exploration. Lada chose to construct these pieces applying the 4 needle method of knitting in the round; a progression of loops are strung together forming a seamless, tactile object patiently created from a single piece of yarn and four double pointed needles.
Twine Glasses: Missing in Action Knitted object, 2007-2008 Dimensions variable $400 per glass
Mark Dober
Black Swans, Williamstown Oil on canvas, 2008 61 x 91cm $2000
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Tommaso Durante Williamstown Festival Contemporary Art Prize
Skin, Surfaces and Shadows is an artist book that tries to explore the surfaces of things and the figurative dividing line of the shadow with the wrought images and design of the artist and the sculptured words of the poet. On the edge of the artistic practice and philosophical inspiration, Skin, Surfaces and Shadows pushes the boundaries of art, craft and design by combining digital technology with traditional techniques and materials. Skin, Surfaces and Shadows Artist book with poems by Chris Wallace-Crabbe Paper, 2007, (1) Artist Proof, I/IV, 26 x 21 x 2.6cm, Not for sale (2) Limited edition, 8 of 25, 26 x 21 x 2.6cm , $2500
Tanja George In the fabrication of my sculptures I use a vast variety of materials. My fascination lies with everyday objects, discarded industrial-mechanical components and wood. They have become the basis for my recent sculptural work. Just as the objects, which I use in my work, seem to have reached the end of their life span, I transform them into something new. To me they are treasures that have an aesthetic life beyond their function. My work acknowledges their beauty and value. By ‘reinventing’ them, I give them a new life, as slightly jaded, often humorous sculptures. Embrace H1723 (from the Venus Series ) Metal & Papermaché, 2008 105 x 30 x 30cm $490
Erika Gofton
Represented by Dickerson Gallery & Schubert Gallery I am celebrating the sensitivity and beauty of the female figure. I wish to present an intimate look at womanhood and to create works depicting beauty, grace and harmony. I am captivated by the female form and intrigued with the subtlety between the sensual and the sexual, the unique motifs and iconography associated with femininity. Texture, fabric and drapery play an integral role in my work. The natural beauty of the body and the echo of form beneath the natural folds of the drapery suggests a quiet and captivating sexuality. Soar Oil on Canvas with hand stitching, 2007, 51 x 51cm per panel (triptych) $4300
Andrew Goodman My work is in general principally concerned with investigating Bataille’s idea of the informe in relation to the human body – with creating objects that refer to the materiality of body, and immersive situations that trouble and disturb the physical and psychological boundaries of the viewers own body. The work also explores the idea of the uncanny in relation to the body through the blurring of the distinction between human, animal and plant forms. I am particularly interested in referencing aspects in our own popular culture that also reflect these ideas.
Beast Material, cotton, speakers, Mp3 players, sound loop, lights, transformers, 2008 150 x 200 x 120cm approx $1500
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Julie Goodwin Williamstown Festival Contemporary Art Prize
This is the window of a suburban house in which I lived whilst suffering clinical depression. The landscape within it depicts the view from my parents lounge room onto the farm where I grew up. The idea of connecting these images is to represent the passing of time and understanding the impact and relevance of my childhood experience. Completing this painting is symbolic of my healing, and self acceptance and the ability to move forward.
Looking Back Oil on canvas, 2008 107x152cm $3400
Andrew Green It’s not often you hear fishermen and environmentalists arm in arm. People (and the penguins, seals, dolphins, seahorse, etc.) don’t like their bay being stuffed up so that Chinese superships can fill $2 shops more quickly and efficiently, compelling the likes of Lindsay Fox, Tim Fischer, John Lines CMA, Dr Brain National Institute of Economic and Industry Research and the former head of CSIRO’s Environmental Projects office. He said the Port’s environmental reports were more like a business plan, not an ecological assessment*. * The Age, 21/1/08, p 3. Coming! Ready or not Analogue photo with ink and pastel, 2008 90cm x 60cm $380
Colleen Guiney I was stirred by a newspaper article titled Power to The People that was on the back of a cutting I had kept. Armenia has a nuclear power station situated between two fault lines in an active earthquake zone. When this was discovered, the power station was closed down and the people went without power for 5 years. They were desperate for heat and electricity and eventually took the risk to reopen the nuclear power station to live as we take for granted. I figure Power To the People encapsulates strength of people, good and not so good.
Power To The People Mixed Media, 2007 80 x 120cm $975
Trudi Harley The ‘path’ can be seen as a metaphor for the journey of life, embodying continuums and disjunctions, imperfections and anomalies.
Disjunction Oil Pastel on Annagoni Paper, 2008 95 x 120cm $1500
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Jason Haufe
Represented by Stephen McLaughlan Gallery
Williamstown Festival Contemporary Art Prize
The funny thing about this painting is that the best bit is the bit that I didn’t do anything to.
Painting XXII 2007 Oil on Linen, 2007 110 x 105cm $3300
Debbie Hill As commentary on the twenty first century Dolls of War is a response to the role of women in society, conflict, technological advances and the impact of the media on daily life.
Dolls of War Charcoal on Drafting Paper, 2008 110 x 90cm $1200
Janne Kearney This painting is part of a solo exhibition called Gone Bush, it is the product of a year of Friday nights spent drinking with friends at the ‘Bush Inn Hotel’. I spent many hours taking hundreds of photos of them enjoying a drink, a laugh, and Aussie mateship. Here I have fictionally depicted the rum drinker as the SP Bookie, always prepared with his notepad and pen, and the publican enjoying a cold beer eagerly awaiting a hot tip! The technique applied to this piece is the thick rich texture of the palette knife, and broad energised brushwork.
A hot tip and a cold beer! Oil on canvas, 2007 90 x 120cm $1800
Sue Kneebone These images evoke the theatrical stage of the microscope where the scientific gaze mediates our experience of nature. Hemiptera showcases ephemera plucked from suburban backyard obscurity and put on stage to engage our curiosity into the social world of creatures hiding from our everyday view.
Hemiptera 1 Digital archival print, 2007, 50 x 50cm $420
Hemiptera 2 Digital archival print, 2007, 50 x 50cm $420
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Markus Kunschak Williamstown Festival Contemporary Art Prize
In my current practice I’m revisiting my own photographic work: recycling some projects, maturing them, going deeper and permeating them with new impressions, new perspectives. In this process I apply various techniques on the printed photographs such as drawing, engraving, scratching, writing and collage (no digital media), adding new and unexpected dimensions to them.
Dreamscape: Genesis of a City (detail) Mixed Media, 2008 40 x 85cm $750
Alison Langley
Represented by Dickerson Gallery Melbourne Archipelancholy is part of a new series of photographic works influenced by the artist’s recent visits to Japan and Vietnam. These works are both mysterious and solitary, and allow the memories and experiences of each individual viewer to inform only personal interpretations and associations. By combining studio macro-photography with real world photographs, the artist constructs miniature landscapes that are also seen as more universal terrain. Archipelancholy Lightjet print on Duraflex, Edition 1 of 5, 2008 30 x 100cm $880 unframed
Stone Lee The works I create are a response to meaninglessness; a response that aims to exhibit meaning in the only term in which it is possible: the meaning of the ordinary, the everyday, the mundane – the meaning that resides in the common objects that we find around us and with which we interact.
Chiaroscuro of the Everyday Newspaper and Mixed Media, 2008 Dimension variable $1360
Nancy Lehet I’m heavily influenced by 2 recent years spent backpacking - comparing our westernized, materialist-centered lifestyle to second and third world environments. Also as a student of Vipassana meditation, I’m constantly exploring the path of self-actualization, humility and generosity, examining our so-called modern condition. “If wishes... explores that desire to be somewhere else (“I want...”) and apathy on how to get there (“but it’s so far away...”). We constantly battle with our wishes for the new, the different, when really it’s today that matters. For Mr. Deer sadly, it’s too late. For us, it’s not. More images available at: http://nancylehet.wordpress.com
If wishes… Oil on panel, 2008 65 x 65cm $575
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Carolyn Lewens & Neil Stanyer
Testing the Waters (detail) Digital Prints, cardboard tubes, 2008 Dimensions variable POA
Jan Lewis
Williamstown Festival Contemporary Art Prize
The destruction of aquatic life continues amidst appalling greed and ignorance. There is no sense of what has been lost or yet to be discovered. Through up-scaling test-tubes of speculative material dredged from the bottom of the bay we offer a rich bio-cultural fluidity of imagined life-forms, remixed in the potent fluidity of digital sensory experience. By diving through the pollution of political expediency we offer glimpses of what might be, of the wonder and diversity of living things. We shed light onto dark, distressed aqueous zones where nature is being disturbed, destroyed, deleted.
Ford’s View evolved out of ephemeral works I created at Mogareeka on the far south coast of NSW last year. The land was farmed in the early 1900’s by Noel Ford who grew tobacco for the insecticide ‘Blackleaf 40’. My works tend to be quirky and in this piece I couldn’t resist the ubiquitous connotations associated with the Ford name. Ford’s View Acrylic on canvas, 2007 82 x 102cm $1000
Sarina Lirosi This piece is from the series The Pantry Moth which was part of an exhibition that took place at Linden Centre for Contemporary Arts in 2007. The show Room: A Series of Schemes: Scheme II – Kitchen, was the second of a series of collaborative exhibitions. It was envisaged that in these shows each exhibited body of works would examine the nature and function of each room in a ‘typical’, domestic house. Dinner was created in response to the idea of “the kitchen” and manifests a simultaneous revulsion and attraction to the silvery, silent pests that consistently haunt that room.
Dinner Archival inks on paper, 2007 100 x 98cm $1300
Andrew May
Represented by Circusgallery Melbourne
The Ghost of Christmas Past Oil on Canvas, 2007 170 x 150cm $3700
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Mark McCarthy Williamstown Festival Contemporary Art Prize
Represented by Dianne Tanzer Gallery
Hitting Stride Oil on Canvas, 2006 115 x 200cm $3300
Danielle McCarthy Danielle is an artist who is drawn to investigate the dreams and desires of children. Madam X, Y is an examination of a young girl trying on her mothers clothing, except in this case the young girl is trying on the persona of Sergeants iconic painting of Madam X.
Madam X,Y (detail) Oil on canvas & installation. 2007 160 x 140 x 80cm POA
Darren McGinn My caravans consider, explore and develop a number of regional, sociological directions. They symbolise social paradox and polarity: tradition/innovation, subsistence/affluence, past/present and permanence/change. “Built for the road, they loiter gracelessly in backyards. Long after their logic of movement has been defeated, they simply exist.” From ‘Marooned’ by Bruce Caron. Busman’s Holiday Ceramic & painted timber, 2007 90 x 200 x 50 cm $2800
Peter Mclisky Living in the heart of Melbourne, surrounded by construction, this piece is purely observational. Layer upon layer is being added daily to my surroundings. Each layer adds a new vista, obscures another. Skylines, laneways, reflections are created almost accidentally as each new building reacts with existing Cityscapes. The overall effect suggests the flats of a theatre stage. Each new piece is slid out in front of another to create a new scene. CityScape Mild Steel, 2007 Edition 14 of 25, 20 x 120 x 20cm $1600
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Arna Meldrum
Bull Ink, Pastel, Collage on Paper, 2007 53 x 83.5cm $250
Nadia Mercuri
Williamstown Festival Contemporary Art Prize
I am inspired by the distinctive qualities and colours of the mediums I work with. The figure of a Bull features predominantly in my art practice. I am exploring the dialogue that is bought to the fore when viewing the polarity of masculine and feminine sexual identity. The premise that everyone consists of both masculine and feminine parts to their sexuality. And from that the tensions and conflict arising. I use used business envelopes I have collected from another part of my life – my office job. My artwork is layered with the everydayness of life. The ordinary and the discarded found object.
My new work is informed by the nature of the Universe and the ways it is represented in Western popular culture and science. I utilize glass as this material lends itself to the visual representation of ideas inspired by space. The often mysterious and ambiguous properties of glass in describing light and its presence or absence is unique. Glass has its own inner-space; a substance in which interior and surface are simultaneously visible. A metaphor is drawn from the infinite cosmos made of huge and minute spaces, structures and experiences.
Orbital Blown glass, cast Bullseye glass, 2007 49 x 30 x 30cm $1600
Ben Millar
The practice of levity (pheelix finds colour) Time Based Media, 2006-07 Variable dimensions $900 (image still)
Shay Minster Half Way There is from the series I could care less 2007. It explores personal experiences that remain in an unresolved state with an underlying sense of unease, while offering a potential end to the discomfort and restlessness.
Half Way There Inkjet print, Edition 1/10, 2007 $750 unframed $950 framed
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Johanna Morrison
Mike Nicholls
Williamstown Festival Contemporary Art Prize
My eyes don’t know where to look when I’m in the city. All of the movement overwhelms them in the most intoxicating way. The people I photograph remain strangers to me. I could liken them to a present that I’m unable to unwrap. I can only know them by observing their outside wrappers…. shape. Walking style, clothing, what they carry etc. This is what excites me about the city. Capturing these moments of wonder on the camera, gives me the chance to reflect no on who these people really are, but who I perceive them to be, as there are no strings attached. I tamper with the reality of the initial moment captured, by filming the photographed wanderers in a way that tricks the eye into believing they’re moving. I give that moment and the wanderers a chance to journey beyond a single still frame without the city surrounds that often swallow people up. The wanderers are no longer foreign to me, as their true essence is abandoned when I re-create their form. I am familiar with each and every one of my subjects and have formed a very peculiar relationship with them. I do not simply spend time looking at them, but also manipulate them to move in a certain way. In a sense, I have given birth to their new identities and have grown quite fond of them.
The Wanderers, Photographs & film, 2006, Dimensions variable, $1800
Slow Dive Red box, 2007 165 x 39 x 29cm $10,000
Will Nuttall
Townscape #1 Acrylic on canvas, 2007’ 61 x 61cm $950
Carlo Pagoda The exploration is of memories, using ‘Post It Notes’ as a metaphor for structuring our memories and thoughts, past present and future, a short hand version of our brain’s hippocampus that has an essential role in the formation of new memories and experienced events. But ‘Post It Notes’ with a Rorschach inkblot, to sort out, organise and examine our unique personality characteristics.
Memories Post it notes, black ink, wood, 2006 96 x 96cm $500
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Susanne Pearce
Peeling Series – No 4 Acrylic on canvas, 2008 61.5 x 91.5cm $500
Scott Pearce
Williamstown Festival Contemporary Art Prize
In my current practice I am exploring deconstructing abstract painting from a contemporary viewpoint but within a strong art-historical framework. My works bring together characteristics of both painting and sculpture, surface and volume. The exhibited work is a quirky play on the idea of what is a painting – the painted surface appears to have split and peeled back, and the surface is brought into the third dimension.
I’m a great believer in drawing’s importance. Drawing forms the cornerstone of my art practice. It provides for me an opportunity to articulate and precipitate my life experience, allowing time to condense what I see in the world. The medium of charcoal on paper allows me to build this stimulus into an image in the most direct and immediate way. Allowing for the spontaneous expression, in this particular image, of the cars, trucks, and people as they form part of the life around me. This creates a contrast with the accumulation of time through the work, providing a ‘slow burn’ to the viewer, in an age of high speed answers. Untitled II Charcoal & conte, 2008 70 x100cm $550
Evan Pierce Here is based loosely on the photographs of Baldwin Spencer (pioneering photographer of aboriginal tribes in the Northern Territory in the early 1900’s). I wanted the viewer to feel a kinship with the subject, to create a sense of presence whereby the viewer feels that while judging, they themselves are being judged. Here is part of a group of work based on the spirit of resilience and endurance. Here Acrylic on canvas, 2007 76 x 76cm $490
Robyn Rayner
Represented by JBM Art Consultancy My surroundings formed the initial inspiration for my work which is essentially observations of the world around me. I’m interested in the experience of the landscape, a sense place and the comings and goings of everyday life. I arrange images to create a random narrative and a sense of rhythm and movement through the landscape and often work spontaneously and intuitively. Heads And Tails 1 Etching/Drypoint, 2007 79 x 91cm $1000
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Chris Rowe Williamstown Festival Contemporary Art Prize
My work explores the interaction of people with each other and their environment, the beauty and pain of life. The challenge and joy of observing and drawing the figure is integral to my artistic expression. I have the privilege of being part of a group of artists who meet each week. We become immersed bringing the form to paper working in different ways with different goals. In my drawings I aim to capture the feeling of the pose, the structure within, the sense of the person and the atmosphere of the shared space.
Shades of Dree Charcoal, Conte & pastel, 2007 100 x 70cm $950
Lara Russell Mungo 10 is drawn from a series of paintings resulting from a journey to Mungo National Park in south west New South Wales. As an artist predominately attracted to natural themes that allow for the emotional exploration of our physical world and the forces that create and reshape within, Mungo inspires for its space, strength, drama, rhythms, silence, contradictions and inconstancy. Timeless and ancient yet ever changing and evolving. The depicted image – a sand and clay formation modified by wind and water over thousands of years - captures a fleeting moment co-existing fragility, beauty, reformation and decay. Mungo 10 Oil on canvas, 2007 92 x 122cm $1500
Nina Ryan
Represented by Jackman Gallery I find I have a rapport with the agricultural landscape of Wonga Park as it is similar to the farming countryside of Gippsland where I grew up.
Wonga Park Oil on canvas, 2008 84 x 164cm $2500
Judith Sackville-O’Donnell Stamford Park, Stud Park, is a onetime grand old Melbourne house that was built during the boom period of the 1880s. Despite living in the area for twenty-five years I was, until recently, unaware of its existence as it is set well back from Stud Road. There is some dispute about who owns the once elegant driveway and as a result it has fallen into disrepair. I was attracted to the shadows cast across it by the old and broken cypress trees.
Driveway Entrance, Stamford Park Acrylic on canvas, 2007 50 x 70cm POA
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Bill Sampson
Represented by [MARS] Gallery
Smart modern & Swish: An Outfit to Die for Acrylic on paper, 2007 155 x 182cm $6600
Hannah Scott-Stevenson
Williamstown Festival Contemporary Art Prize
These abstractions critically challenge aesthetic doctrines of form, expression and gesture by proposing a new value to inexpressive art and emphasize the significance of chaos to the creative act. Their criticality lies in the tension between a visual seductiveness and their nihilistic means of production, for they are created purely by chance – an anachronistic marbling process. My practice revolves around how meaning, significance and value are constructed – relevant perhaps in these ‘fundamentalist’ times. My aim is to make things as free from artistic content and human meaning as I can, and still have them sit within a 2D art genre.
Emerging contemporary artist Hannah Scott-Stevenson uses the medium of photography to explore and satirise themes surrounding the often stereotypical nature of femininity and the projection of changing social cultures onto young woman and girls. In the Dollface series Hannah creates large scale photographic works reminiscent of the polished images often seen in fashion magazines and advertisements surrounding ‘girl culture’. The work questions how this saturation of ideas through imagery effects the development of what girls see as being their ‘role’ in society? Scott-Stevenson studied at the Victorian College of the Arts completing her bachelor of fine art, majoring in photography. Sandy (from the Dollface series) Photograph, 2007 60 x 90cm $990
Ben Sheers
Represented by McCulloch Gallery, Melbourne Fled is a work which uses our urban environment to provide a moment of visual poetry in which the spectator is drawn in to a mysterious narrative grounded in fear and suspicion.
Fled Oil on canvas, 2008 117 x 169cm $2800
Julie Shiels Just passing through is a collection objects made by plaster casting the voids in plastic packaging. The moulded forms serve as a kind of three- dimensional memory, tracing the shape, form and obsolescence of those once brand new gadgets. Their ghostly white surfaces recall the plaster replicas of antiquity at the same time marking a death of desire. Many of these forms are recognisable, others aren’t and some live on the cusp. It is this ambiguity that invites the viewer to ponder the origins of the objects: the products of our commercial, industrial age, the cornucopia of the $2 shop. Just passing through Plaster casts from plastic packaging, 2007 200 x 140 x 10cm $2250
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Nina Smart Williamstown Festival Contemporary Art Prize
Represented by Little Malop Gallery Through my artwork I explore our “rush” to embrace I.T. (information technology) as a fundamental means of communication. I was once taught that body language was by far, the greatest contributing factor to effective communication with another person, yet we are fiercely pursuing forms of communication that don’t involve any physicality. What implications will we face as a result of this vast change in how we relate to each other? In my work I depict body language restricted or “bound” by text scripted tape representing the limited expression and communication I fear our technological advances bring with them.
Running Late for I.T. (information technology) Pastel on watercolour paper, 2007 104 x 82cm $1200
Gloria Stern
Represented by Gallery 101, Melbourne Humans cannot be separated from their environment. Our experience of the world is always reflected within a contextual space. My paintings are concerned with the relationship of people to the natural world and how different environments make us feel both emotionally and physically.
Helter Skelter Oil on canvas, 2007 92x122cm $3000
Amber Stuart My inspiration comes from the environment, and the possibilities that exist for recreating and reinvigorating landscapes through art. When taking the photographs I concentrate on deconstructing the landscape. Then, through the process of Polaroid Emulsion Transfer, I reconstruct the images, giving a fresh perspective on the landscape. Often the medium can be unpredictable, tearing or stretching, which I believe adds to the ethereal quality of the work.
Reflections in Moto Hakone Polaroid Emulsion Transfer, 2008 40 x 55cm $300
James Tapscott
Totem#3 C-type Print, 2008 51 x 81cm $550
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James Taylor
Durer’s Polyhedron Charcoal & watercolour, 2007 116 x 160cm POA
Geoff Tolchard
Williamstown Festival Contemporary Art Prize
Classic “sacred geometry”, celebrated by artists like Albrecht Durer, endures in the sharp geometry of Melbourne’s suburban architecture. The polyhedron, one of the philosopher’s tools of trade, is a symbol of the triumph of order over the chaos of nature – a driving force in Western culture. It is a confrontation rather than a collaboration with nature however, and has a dark environmental legacy.
From the series Post-Modem Using Charles Darwin’s ‘modification with descent’, from The Origin of the Species, I explore the moment preceding the event of an arrival or departure - a juncture in ones life. This ‘tension or energy’, which remains in constant flux, presents its self as individuals come and go. The work deals with this abstract notion; entities on the cusp of acceptance or rejection. Images/places are manipulated from Google Earth comprising of rivers intersecting with roads and highways. Blinking in the shadows Photograph, 2007 60 x 90cm $990
Andrew Trahair
Represented by Anne Runhardt Fine Art Fledgling; a young bird, an inexperienced person. Croon; hum or sing in a low subdued voice, esp. in a sentimental manner. The Oxford English Reference Dictionary. Mid afternoon and a young man raises his head from a deep red sleep. He tests the air and finds a turquoise light on the orange track. A lone shrub shades the thin path leading to the high road. He thinks of Frank Sinatra and Nick Cave and their sentimental manner as he collects his bull-dusted bags and chooses a way to go. Fledging Crooner Oil on canvas, 2008, 120 x 120cm $6600
Merryn J Trevethan
You Go Your Way I’ll Go Mine Acrylic on canvas, 2008 150 x 108cm $2950
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Bibi Viro Williamstown Festival Contemporary Art Prize
Summertime is an explorative play using a series of circular motifs that are repeated, enlarged, overlapped and brightly coloured to evoke the dynamic energy of summer. The image is printed using archival pigmented inks on 100% cotton acid free paper.
SummertimePastel on watercolour paper, 2007 Ink on paper, 2008 80 x 80cm $770
Cyrus Wai-Kuen Tang
Remote Nation Digital print on film, Limited Edition, 2008 85 x 120cm $590
Liz Walker Shop till you drop addresses the issues of global warming and unsustainable consumerism: both a very real threat to the future of our planet. We should carefully consider where our retail dollar is directed- investing in a greener, more environmentally sound lifestyle because, after all, we just love to shop.
Shop till you drop Recycled metal & rivets, 2008 85 x 65 x 25cm x 3 pieces $1650
Carmel Wallace
Represented Gallery 101 Melbourne Discovery Bay near my home in SW Victoria offers me materials on its tide-lines: plastic broken free from cray-pots, and jettisoned cargo wedges once used to hold logs, including those from local forests, on ships bound for the paper mills of Japan. These materials speak of the way nature is negotiated by people in these environs: of fishing and forest industries and the movement of ships to and from the Port of Portland. Time spent in the elements, at sea and on the beach, is encoded in their shapes, colors and surfaces: the marks of human crafting modified by this environment. Beached Forest #4 Beach-found cargo wedges on ply, 2007, 45 x 180 x 40cm $3500
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Photograph by Tim Gresham
Juliet Walsh
Sheep Acrylic on canvas, 2007 103 x 91cm $3000
Heather Winter
Represented by Kunstation, Vienna
Williamstown Festival Contemporary Art Prize
Painting can make me anxious. I sometimes have to drag myself to the easel, other times I can’t tear myself away from it. My time is limited and precious. I seem to work with a messy palette and colours suggest themselves to me. As an art therapist I find myself surprisingly inarticulate about my own work except that it seems to come from some dark place inside and yet once it’s on the canvas I feel a sense of calm and also curiosity.
“Japanese vessels killed a group of Whales yesterday as Foreign Minister Stephen Smith held talks with his Japanese counterpart, Masahiko Komura.” (The Age 30/1/08) Through political commentaries we see inaction; The Australian Government, the Oceanic Viking, the opposing Japanese Government. As those aboard the Sea Shepherd (renamed Steve Irwin) continue to fight; we recall their plight as a modern day symbol of personal sacrifice. The modern day Warrior leaves behind their corporate counterpart to engage in a world tangled in the complexities of mediation on behalf of the silenced other; the endangered mink whales. Enough Rope; Warriors Sea Shepherd Metallic type c print, 2007, 80 x 80cm $3200
Kate Winterton My approach is emotive and intuitive. Tipping reality using surreal allegories of abject horror and fantasy the work engages in primal and cultural ideas behind the feminine and the hysterical body. This work is part of a series of photographic and sculptural performances looking into the sexual fears and uncanny desires surrounding the feminine grotesque. Using gum as material that interacts with my own body I manipulate it into malleable and playful forms that resonates the pliable nature of the female body. Untitled C-type photographic print, 2007 61 x 61cm $550
Oleh Witer
The Witch’s Candle Oil on linen, 2008 184.5 x 184.5cm $8800
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Katy Woodroffe Williamstown Festival Contemporary Art Prize
Represented by Art Equity, Sydney & Handmark Gallery, Hobart This work was inspired by a recent journey through Eastern Europe. My preconceptions about cultures emerging from the communist era were shattered when I encountered the confident, modern societies of Hungary, Slovenia and Slovakia, where the people seemed comfortable with the traditions of the past whilst embracing the excitement of the future. The beautiful lace I collected in these different countries had existed as an integral part of the societies for centuries and I have used it as the basis of the works. I have attempted to celebrate the individual optimism of contemporary women who are still linked to the culture, traditions and female artisans of the past. In the Amber Room: The Engagement 3 Mixed media on paper, 2008, 125 x 160cm, $6200
Chris Wootton I am fascinated by the way our minds work, how we interpret what we see. This installation could be imagined as animal, vegetable or mineral, creatures living beneath the sea, plants growing in the wilderness or rock formations caused by volcanic activity. It could be a model of microscopic organisms or of giant mountain ranges.
Gathering Crocheted cotton, 2007-08 25 x 60 x 60cm $2400
Daniel Worth The main focus of my work is to find a visual balance between the chaotic and the ordered realities we as humans experience in our natural and man made environments. I explore the relationship between these two elements and work at the fringe where they meet and interact with each other. It is a necessity for me to work directly from life in order to capture the essence and vitality of the chosen subject. I use all mediums necessary to express this life and feeling through an artwork to the viewer.
Alan Young
Represented by Despard Gallery I am driven to paint in response to what I see and experience in my everyday life, therefore, my paintings are grounded in my immediate environment. This painting is one of a series of paintings created while artist in residence at St Vincent’s Hospital, which involved making the transition from living in a gentle city like Hobart to living in Melbourne. It is a quirky and humorous response to what seemed to me to be an intimidating, strange and almost alien environment.
One of a Kind Acrylic & Oil stick on canvas, 2008 102 x 77cm $2200
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Portrait of my studio Mixed media on board, 2008, 65 x 200cm, $2000
Thanks to The Circus is Coming to Town!
Williamstown Festival 08 11th-13th April, Commonwealth Reserve, Nelson Place www.williamstownfestival.com.au
www.thesubstation.org.au
Greg Reid
MBA(FP), PGDAcct, BComm, DFS(FP), CIV(MB), ACA
0428 310 165 greg@reidconsultants.com.au www.reidconsultants.com.au
46 Ferguson St, Williamstown 03 9397 4559
75 Ferguson Street, Williamstown 03 9397 2000 www.williamsre.com.au
Toyota Community Spirit
Greenwich Gallery 32 Parker St Williamstown 03 9397 2418
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