The acquisitive Redlands Konica Minolta Art Prizes are awarded each year to one established and one emerging artist.
Melbourne-based artist Gail Hastings won the $25,000 established artist category with her mixed media drawing colour circle: four colour scheme for a room, 2018. Sydney-based emerging artist Adrian McDonald was awarded $10,000 for his painting, Approximating a Circle, 2018.
Now in its 22nd year, the 2018 Redlands Konica Minolta Art Prize was curated by artist Nike Savvas who selected 19 established artists. “I have selected artists whose practices evidence discriminating, uncompromising and highly individualist approaches to art making,” said Savvas, “this exhibition titled, Extreme Prejudice, seeks to highlight the personal and critical imperatives that belie and drive such single-minded work.”
Each established artist in turn nominated an emerging artist to join the show. Adrian McDonald was invited by established artist Richard Dunn. Gail Hastings selected emerging artist Dan McCabe.
This year the judges were MCA senior curator Natasha Bullock, NAS Gallery curator Judith Blackall, visual arts coordinator at Redlands School Mark Harpley, and Fabian Byrne who is a visual arts teacher at Redlands. Both winning works will join the permanent art collection of Redlands School.
Discussing colour circle: four colour scheme for a room by Gail Hastings, Natasha Bullock said, the work “is playful and inventive, and distinguished by its aesthetic rigour. It is an exquisitely-made object, which questions the definition of minimalism, and the movement of everyday space.” Mark Harpley, added, “For teaching and learning, the work has an immediate reference to the colour wheel, a tool used by all art students. It allows them to undertake their own investigations into Hastings’s interpretation of space and the stories in a broader context.”
The judges admitted that the quality of all the contenders meant that they had a hard time choosing a winner for the emerging artist category. “This year there is an exciting range of outstanding works by early-career artists – ambitious and thought-provoking installations, conceptual, socially and politically conscious, formally and materially sophisticated,” they said.
Discussing the work they finally chose, Adrian McDonald’s Approximating a Circle, Fabian Byrne said, “It is a painting, but not as we have known painting previously. There are no brush strokes, there is no picture, no image. Rather, the reference is to data and mathematics and the punched holes of a pianola roll…This work displays McDonald’s deep engagement with post-objective image making and he is clearly becoming a master of his craft.”
Works by all of the established/emerging artist pairs (Richard Bell/Megan Cope, Vivienne Binns OAM/Jacob Potter, Vicente Butron/Gemma Avery, Richard Dunn/Adrian McDonald, Sarah Goffman/Connie Anthes, Agatha Gothe-Snape/Aodhan Madden, Gail Hastings/Dan McCabe, Tim Johnson/Hayley Megan French, Lindy Lee/Kath Fries, Stephen Little/Joe Wilson and Chanelle Collier, Jonny Niesche/Mason Kimber, John Nixon/Lucina Lane, Rose Nolan/Renee Cosgrave, Kerrie Poliness/Melissa Deerson, Elizabeth Pulie/Zoe Marni-Robertson, Huseyin Sami/Consuelo Cavaniglia, David Serisier/Oliver Wagner, Jenny Watson/Annie O’Rourke, Hilarie Mais/Conor O’Shea) will be on show at the National Art School Gallery until 12 May 2018.
Visitors can vote for a viewer’s choice award which will be announced at the close of the exhibition.
2018 Redlands Konica Minolta Art Prize Exhibition
National Art School Gallery
15 March – 12 May 2018
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