Congratulations to Akil Ahamat who has won the $10,000 non-acquisitive John Fries Award, administered by the Copyright Agency. The Sydney-based artist was selected from a field of 12 early career visual artists for his video piece, So the spaces between us can stay soft, 2018.
The annual award for was judged this year by Kath Fries, artist and daughter of the late John Fries who the award honours; artist Consuelo Cavaniglia, who also curated the exhibition; director of 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art Mikala Tai; New Zealand-based artist Shannon Te Ao; and Sophia Kouyoumdjian, coordinator of the Parramatta Artists Studios.
Consuelo Cavaniglia, who has curated the award exhibition two years running, said of Ahamat’s winning work, “The judges returned to the work again and again, drawn by the intimacy of the experience. The work talks of power and complicity, vulnerability and control. It stems from an online experience but finds its own language.”
South Australian artist Rachael Mipantjiti Lionel was highly commended for her painting, Kapi Wankanya, 2018.
Works by all 12 finalists (Akil Ahamat, Betty Muffler, Beyula Napanangka Puntungka, Emily Parsons-Lord, James Nguyen, Jelena Telecki, Laura Hindmarsh, Leyla Stevens, Lisa Sammut, Paul Greedy, Rachael Mipantjiti Lionel, and Rochelle Haley) will be on show at UNSW Galleries until 3 November.
John Fries Award 2018 Finalist Exhibition
UNSW Galleries
29 September – 3 November
65,000 Years: A Short History of Australian Art is an extraordinary account of the unique art of this continent, published alongside a landmark exhibition at the Potter Museum of Art. Necessary and urgent, it tells the story of Indigenous Australian art; a new art history unlike anything we’ve seen. For Jane O’Sullivan, it’s a remarkable and must-read book.
In a new series of illustrated postcards available as a free gift with purchase only at the Art Guide Bookstore, Oslo Davis takes on classic and contemporary art terms and genres and reimagines what they could be referring to.
With so much to choose from, we’ve rounded up the major summer exhibitions in each capital city, open all summer long. Spanning Yayoi Kusama, Magritte, the Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, and many more.
About Face is a smart piece of marketing. The new book on portrait painting from Australia and New Zealand has a mission to change buyers’ minds about the field. But as Jane O’Sullivan discovers, any sales pitch wears thin if it’s repeated often enough, and the close attention to how portrait painting is received by the market means that other important conversations fade to the background.
Radical Textiles, A new exhibition at the Art Gallery of South Australia, shows us how textiles evoke material memories while keeping the radical lineage of needle and thread alive.
In her latest exhibition at Plimsoll Gallery, Janine Combes uses her background as a jewellery maker to create a body of work inspired by abandoned towns once marked for settlement in Tasmania.
