Speaking volumes: on our love affair with art books
The growing cultural interest in art books reflects the enduring power of the printed word. Jane O’Sullivan takes a closer look.
Advertisement
Advertisement
Lee Grant has been awarded the National Photographic Portrait Prize for her black-and-white portrait Charlie, and Filomena Rizzo was highly commended for the photograph of her daughter, My Olivia.
Both works were praised for their “power of humanness” by co-judge of the award Dr Christopher Chapman, who is senior curator at the National Portrait Gallery.
Charlie and My Olivia also tell a story of young people encountering the world. “It’s like both subjects are facing futures that are uncertain. And they’re doing so bravely,” said co-judge and curator at the Art Gallery of Western Australia Mr Robert Cook. “It’s the bravery that you have when you’re afraid, when you yourself might crumble and you figure there’s only a fifty/fifty shot at making it through. What the artists have done here is present this dilemma, one we all get on some level, with compassion, without artifice and without false heroics.”
“I can’t quite put into words how grateful I am,” said Grant on receiving the award. “I have been a Canberra girl for most of my life, so there is an extra personal significance in being able to share this work in my old hometown in one of the country’s most esteemed and respected institutions.”
Rizzo said of her work, “The portrait of Olivia was taken in the Redwood Forest, a very magical place. I didn’t see the real significance of the image until some weeks later. The image shows vulnerability and sadness, but mostly I see strength and a bond only we two share. My girls are by far my greatest teachers.”
Grant was awarded $30,000 cash from the Portrait Gallery, lighting equipment from Profoto and paper supplies from Ilford. Rizzo will receive an Eizo monitor valued at $4,000.
The National Photographic Portrait Prize 2018 Art Handlers’ Award was presented to Stephanie Simcox for her portrait Joey, which depicts a man relaxing post-work in a local waterhole in the Central Desert Region.
The National Photographic Portrait Prize is open to the public until 17 June before touring to regional locations.
The public can vote for their favourite work for the People’s Choice award online here.
National Photographic Portrait Prize 2018
National Portrait Gallery
24 March – 17 June
The growing cultural interest in art books reflects the enduring power of the printed word. Jane O’Sullivan takes a closer look.
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 a new collaborative exhibition at PS Art Space, in partnership with Cool Change Contemporary, five artists with process-lead practices contemplate material ethics through actively engaging in slowness and reuse.
Artists need not fear the spectre of AI-generated art. Instead, Oslo Davis suggests, we need to start reaping the rewards.
A Delicate Terrain, a new exhibition of works drawn from the Tweed Regional Gallery collection, looks at our relationship with the environment through the lens of contemporary art.
In GHOSTLAND, her new exhibition at the ANU Art & Design Gallery, Julie Gough continues her lifelong inquiry into gaps and silences—while conjuring the apparitions that haunt Tasmania’s colonial past.
