WINNERS ANNOUNCED FOR PRESTIGIOUS WHYALLA ART PRIZE

Country Arts SA and the City of Whyalla have announced Launceston-based Paul Snell as the winner of the prestigious $25,000 Whyalla Art Prize at the Middleback Arts Centre in Whyalla, South Australia on Tuesday evening, October 6, 2015.

Snell was awarded the sought-after prize for his piece Intersect #201504, a lambda print face-mounted to 6mm plexiglass. It won out of 71 finalists and 212 entrants from artists around the country.

The three judges for the prize were Susan Jenkins, senior curator at the Anne and Gordon Samstag Museum of Art; Grant Hill, winner of the 2013 City of Whyalla Art Prize and David Broker, director of the Canberra Contemporary Art Space, who spoke of how the winner emerged for all three judges;

“We had to choose work that spoke not only of composition and technical skill, but something that elicits a response in the viewer,” said Broker.

“The winning piece references op-art and colour field abstraction of mid twentieth century, but uses modern techniques to make the composition really sing.”

There were also two youth categories in the award. The first, the OneSteel and Arrium Mining Most Promising Young SA Artist 18 to 26 years of age worth $2,000, went to Whyalla local Olivia White for Space Between Spaces: Unknowns, an oil on linen piece painted last year. Ms White, who attended the awards ceremony, said her upbringing in Whyalla has greatly influenced her work.

“My current process reflects my thoughts on the imperfect nature of memory and is influenced by the patterns, textures and palette of where I have grown up,” said Ms White.

The second prize in this category was a $1,000 monetary award for the OneSteel and Arrium Mining Most Promising Young SA Artist 17 years of age and under and went to Fenella Hall for her watercolour A Beautiful Menace.

Other honourable mentions for their submitted work are New South Wales artist Linda Greedy for her piece Freak Out; Victorian artist Diego Ramirez for aXolotl’s Happiness; South Australian-based Henry Witjika Young (originally from Western Australia) for Who will keep my Grandfather’s stories when they close down our home? (Irruntju W.A.); New South Wales artist Zanny Begg for 1001 Nights in Fairfield and South Australian artist Leith O’Malley for The Trojan Horse (the ore price cometh).

There will be plenty of opportunities for the South Australian public to see the finalists’ work, said Country Arts SA CEO Steve Saffell.

“The Middleback Arts Centre in Whyalla has installed an exhibition of these finalists’ work that will run from the 26 September to the 14 November 2015 for the general public to view,” said Mr Saffell. “This year, people outside Whyalla will again be able to view the work with a curated exhibition of winners and finalists on display at the Adelaide Festival Centre from 14 December 2015 – 31 January 2016. It’s a fantastic opportunity to see the standard of work in this year’s Whyalla Art Prize.”

The prize was open for submission from Australian artists from March 1 – May 29 this year, and included moving image for the first time. The $25,000 prize money was once again contributed by major sponsor, the Corporation of the City of Whyalla. A total of $3,000 prize money for South Australian artists under 26 came from sponsors Arrium Mining and OneSteel.

The Whyalla Art Prize was established in 1972 by the Whyalla Arts Council to provide an opportunity for and promote the work of regional artists. The acquisitive prize has since flourished in the years since and is now regarded as an important exhibition of contemporary arts Australia-wide.

A retrospective exhibition of past finalists from 1972 to 2014 has been on display in the Middleback Arts Centre foyer from June 2015.