Perspectives of Landscape dominate this year’s Kangaroo Valley Art Prize
A total of 484 entries were submitted this year across the Kangaroo Valley Art Prize, Tony White Memorial Art Prize and the Salon of Local Artists Prize, submitted by artists from across Australia and diverse in their offerings.
From those, Megan Monte, Guest Curator and Director of Ngununggula, Retford Park Southern Highlands Regional Gallery, selected the best 124 as finalists for one or other of the prizes. All finalists will be displayed over the October long-weekend in the Kangaroo Valley Hall, transformed for the occasion into a contemporary art gallery.
Among the selected finalists are both the recipient and highly commended from 2020’s Tony White Memorial Art Prize for a young, emerging artist. Orson Heinrich returns with ‘Automobile – Rising’, created with UV pigment on mirror-backed glass. Bronte Cormican-Jones has expanded her single video screen prize winner to ‘A Membrane Between Shifting Spaces’, to be viewed simultaneously over three screens. Young local, Lauren O’Connor, who is now represented by Arthouse Gallery, Rushcutters Bay, enters this year with a bold ‘Yarrunga’ in acrylic on Tasmanian oak panel.
Local Kangaroo Valley artists are again very well represented. Previous prize winners, Githa Pilbrow and Patrick Cummins, are with us again, along with many new names joining the tradition of the Valley as a centre for the creative arts. Among them are works influenced by Matisse and two with “strong Jeffery Smart vibes”.
In her introduction to the Catalogue, Megan commented “The Tony White Memorial Art Prize and the Salon of Local Artists demonstrated an exciting breadth of emerging national and established local practices. Portraiture and social/domestic settings carry personal narratives across many artworks, offering insightful glimpses into the artists’ lives.”
But it is in the signature Kangaroo Valley Art Prize where the theme of landscape, variously presented and interpreted, runs strongest. Here Megan observes “The depth of darkness is matched by a strong sense of anticipation and hope. Perhaps the relics of our recent isolation and lingering moods. Depictions of nature, its beauty and fragility emerge, ever so fitting for a prize presented in the beauty of Kangaroo Valley.”
“One of the most potent things artists can do is to make you want to know more. I was blown away by the sheer talent this year and the range of approaches and styles presented across various mediums, including painting, drawing, video, printmaking and textiles. Perspectives of landscape dominate the selection for this year’s Kangaroo Valley Art Prize. They all took me to different places and memories, yet another magical thing art can do – to transform you. Colour, gesture and medium pushed and pulled, blurred or delicately applied fills each work in different and innovative ways. Discovering such subtleties across the range of artwork has been a delight, drawing focus on merit and the sheer quality of some of the most exceptional works I’ve had the pleasure of viewing.”
We hope you will join us for this weekend festival of the visual arts, centring at the Kangaroo Valley Hall and radiating outward to four other venues in the heart and on the edges of the village.
For information, please contact the director, Gary Moore, on 0421 050 348 or at visualartsinthevalley@outlook.com.
Gary Moore with Megan Monte
