2019
Acknowledgement The Geraldton Regional Art Gallery is proud to present the 2019 Mid West Art Prize. The 2019 Mid West Art Prize has been proudly supported by RedFM, Rio Tinto, Incite Security and Ian Blaney MLA Member for Geraldton Funding partners include the City of Greater Geraldton and the West Australian Department of Culture and the Arts.
Gallery Staff
Sara Walker Coordinator Gallery and Cultural Development
Ellen Norrish Gallery Officer Marnie Douglas Arts and Cultural Development Officer
Gallery Assistants Cam Starcevich Anne-Maree Hopkinson Jenny Passalacqua Emily Littlely
Toni Harrison Karina Pepper Ruth de Beer Tracy Ryan
Gallery Front Desk Volunteer Scott Byrnes
Graphic Design Keely Grieve
Geraldton Regional Art Gallery | 24 Chapman Road, Geraldton WA 6530 | P (08) 9956 6750 | geraldtonregionalartgallery@cgg.wa.gov.au We would like to respectfully acknowledge the Southern Yamatji Peoples who are the Traditional Owners and First People of these lands. We would like to pay our respects to the Elders past, present and future for they hold the memories, the traditions, the culture and the hopes of the Southern Yamatji Peoples.
The City of Greater Geraldton is proud to support this important event, which continues to grow, both in quality and quantity. The Geraldton Regional Art Gallery is a vital part of our community and the City is committed to supporting the development of a strong arts and cultural scene in the region.
FOREWORD His Worship the Mayor, City of Greater Geraldton Shane Van Styn
Research is increasingly demonstrating that the arts not only spur economic development but also shape our consciousness, create a collective attitude, inspire, remake behaviour and reduce stress. The Mid West Art Prize is the perfect example of this. The Prize showcases the high quality of artistic talent that exists not only locally but statewide. This culturally enriching project brings people into our City and adds vibrancy. I am proud to represent a City Council that values the arts and culture and is able to host the prestigious Mid West Art Prize.
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The Mid West Art Prize is a biennial celebration of Western Australia’s extraordinary contemporary art. 2019 marks the fifth Mid West Art Prize, and with finalists from Bunbury to Kununurra, it is undoubtedly a testament to the talent that resides in countless communities across the state. All artworks exhibited have never been shown elsewhere, making the Mid West Art Prize an exciting showcase of new work from WA’s artists. My thanks to Ted Snell, Chief Cultural Officer of the UWA Cultural Precinct and Greg Sikich, Curator of Mundaring Arts Centre, who kindly took time out of their busy schedules to join me on the selection panel this year. I would also like to thank not only our judges, but each artist who took the time to submit their work. It was a pleasure to see such a variety of high-calibre creations and selecting finalists was certainly a challenging process. Congratulations to the small but mighty team of Geraldton Regional Art Gallery; Eve York, Ellen Norrish and Marnie Facchini, our passionate team of volunteers and casuals and the staff of the City of Greater Geraldton. Finally, I would like to recognise the Council and their commitment to providing the community with an exciting, year-round arts program, which GRAG is privileged to facilitate.
INTRODUCTIONS Coordinator Gallery and Cultural Development Sara Walker
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Supported as it is by our wonderful sponsors Rio Tinto, RedFM, Ian Blayney MLA and Incite Security, along with so many dedicated people, I’m sure the esteemed Mid West Art Prize will continue to recognise excellence in WA’s arts well into the future.
JUDGES
Carly Lane
Jim Cathcart
Charlotte Hickson
Curator Indigenous Australian and First Nations Arts, Art Gallery of Western Australia
Director, Fremantle Arts Centre
Exhibitions Manager, Perth Institute of Contemporary Art
With a background in anthropology and Indigenous art, Carly has worked in museums and galleries such as the National Museum of Australia, National Gallery of Australia, Art Gallery of Western Australia, and as a celebrated independent curator. She was the inaugural curator of the Western Australian Indigenous Art Awards, and has a passion for curating exhibitions and making spaces where Indigenous art and voices can be seen and heard.
Previously the acting CEO of the Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts and the Manager of the North Melbourne Town Hall Artshouse, Jim has been guiding Fremantle Arts Centre from the director’s position since 2005. Jim’s experience of the art world is multifaceted, encompassing roles such as general manager, producer, programmer, agent, journalist, and publicist.
Charlotte has been involved with arts organisations across Perth and Sydney for over a decade, including Fremantle Arts Centre, Kaldor Public Art Projects, and the Biennale of Sydney. In these roles, Charlotte has worked with Australian and international artists to produce largescale exhibitions, as well permanent public artworks for the City of Sydney Public Art Collection.
BASIL ANTONAS The Blue Forest [detail]
STEPHEN ARMITSTEAD Gallery 2
COLIN CLARKE Australian Habitation History
A story of stillness. This is an escape to a corner of our imaginations that gives us a moment of calm. The canvas is laden with rich blue tones with flecks of white and an undercurrent of warm colours that can be seen almost peering out of the shadows. Together, these elements add textural detail and interest as well as a sense of expectation and movement to the scene.
Gallery 2 is part of a series work exploring the transformative nature of the gallery space using documentary photography, multiple exposure and rotary carving. This work stretches the notion of a long exposure and is focused on the ceiling of a gallery space for the duration of months. The minimalist fluorescent grid depicts the recent clean confines of the exhibition space and the etched, scratched stark white shapes of previous light fittings recalls an erased past. The bag of remnants located on the right, further reminds the viewer how time is something we hold.
I feel small when exposed to the volume of history produced by 391 tribal/language groups of Indigenous peoples over many thousands of years compared to the shorter history, spanning a few hundred years, that non-indigenous, the “Foreign Nations”, have produced. I expressed my feeling of smallness by painting names of both the tribal/language groups and “Foreign Nations” in the form of growth rings of an old tree, storing history. The clock hands speak of recent history. Together they illustrate how small the “Foreign Nations” history component is.
Acrylic on canvas 94cm x 94cm x 5cm. $1,900
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Digital print, bagged remnants 50cm x 70cm. $480
Acrylic on canvas 111cm x 112cm. $5,250
HELEN ANSELL Spinifex at Sunset
Acrylic on canvas 116cm x 200cm x 5cm. $7,000 Everyone has a place in the world that to them feels like home. To me, being among the red dirt and spinifex plains is that place. Magic hour at sunset. The joy of discovering a rare spinifex circle. And a special visitor. This painting invites the viewer to sit awhile and share in that joy.
LUKE BARLOW 8 Million
Mixed medium, ink and acrylic on tissue paper, encased in resin with found elements 48cm x 67cm x 13cm. $2,000 Eight million tonnes of garbage enter our oceans every year, killing wildlife and destroying ecosystems. I chose materials such as tissue paper and resin to give the artwork a sense of fragility which directly reflects the nature of our marine environments. The found items included in the artwork are pieces collected from the beach on a short afternoon walk. I wanted these items to be unobtrusive yet very obviously there, just like when you take a stroll along the beach, you don’t have to look far to see the damage that we are causing to our oceans.
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JODIE GROVES High Tea [detail]
Encaustic 120cm x 60cm. $850 Tea consumption crosses many cultures and is celebrated in as many ways as people who drink it. Tea encourages people to gather to share stories, support and comfort each other whilst reflecting on life events. This piece abstracts the notion of people coming together to experience the aesthetics of tea drinking and is symbolised by the tea bags embedded in the encaustic. These one-off use items are discarded with little appreciation for their beauty. The tannin stains created on the tea bag from a steeping brew capture evidence of human social interaction and traces of memory.
ELISA MARKES-YOUNG The Place Inside Me Is All The Place I’ve Got Right Now [detail]
Found silk and cotton fabric, silk and cotton thread, self-adhesive fabric, polyester thread, beads, sequins 120cm x 60cm. $2,500 With my cross-cultural biography, trying to navigate between my origins, new influences and unfamiliar surroundings, having to master the language and mentality of a new place, I’m forever a stranger and different. I don’t belong anywhere and live between the here and there, the now and then. I wonder where or what is “home”? It seems so nebulous, fleeting and subjective, fully understood and appreciated only by the dislocated. And maybe when we leave a place, we not so much leave a place but leave ourselves behind. Even though we go away, we stay and yet - we can never go back.
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PAUL SCOTT Divine Fantasy
Alumalux digital print 76cm x 114cm. $1,000 The night of the 2017 Mid West Art Awards, perhaps with euphoria, an intense dream was influenced by two most resonating artworks. Divine Fantasy is a recreation and transformative artwork of that subconscious space. Similar to Magic Realism, the objects and symbolism sit with an environmental, social and spiritual art practice I’m dedicated to. Will technology or bio mimicry be saviour? In the dream, Chief Seattle’s quote was repeated softly, “When the Earth is sick, the animals will begin to disappear, when that happens, “The Warriors of the Rainbow” will come to save them.”
NOAH BIRCH Different Equals
50mm mooring rope 270cm x 385cm x 385. Available for site specific commissions This artwork is a visual representation that although there exists an apparent, visual difference, there is an underlying equality. This work is site specific relying on the site to provide the starting point in the form of the common measurement, the diagonal of the opening, and forming the visual and physical parameters and relationships of engagement.
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DEBBIE CROTHERS Gaslight
Mixed media 22cm x 22cm x 4cm. $250 Gaslighting is a form of mental torture where the main tactic is to gain power by making a victim question their reality. “There’s nothing quite like being told you’ll get kicked out because you pick up things you don’t have permission to when you clean. There’s nothing quite like being told, being nice and clean and helpful is really annoying. Everything is twisted into something to get mad at.” I was shocked to hear a friend has been enduring this form of mental abuse for many years. Tiptoeing through every day. Filtering the words spoken. Questioning every action. I wish them strength.
GEMMA BEN-ARY Liver and Lyme
Horse-hair, steel bit, and cotton thread 48cm x 56cm x 5cm. $750 A lot of my work is about the subjugation of women, the complex relationships between oppressive systems and oppressed beings. This piece features an antique bit from a 17th Century bridle and real horse hair. There is a sense of cruelty in this piece, it is heavy and redolent with stories that cannot be explicitly told.
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TYRON MERRITT Gero Through A Lens Digital photograph 84cm x 118cm. $500
The Point Moore Lighthouse is one of many icons in Geraldton. It’s highly photographed - captured by locals, tourists and photographers – tall, strong and stripey. Like those photographers I usually spend a lot of time setting up for the right image. But this photo was taken from my Mum’s car window as we drove to Point Moore for a swim.
JOANNE DUFFY Into Makuru
Oil on Belgian Linen 60cm x 100cm x 3cm. $4,000 The strange and captivating moments of natural phenomena when sky and land become indistinguishable, with gravity our only reference of perspective. The tumultuous but beautiful storms and seasonal shifts of our ancient Country. We’re but mere observers - it is the reminder of our fragility and insignificance. The use of the Nyoongar word “Makuru” was used intentionally out of respect for the peoples of Ngulla Booja.*Makuru: Nyoongar season for June/July.
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LIA MCKNIGHT Lost in a Forest
Glazed southern ice porcelain, enamel, wool 95cm x 15.5cm x 8cm. $950 Intrigued by the idea of secret worlds pulsing and thriving beyond our awareness, Lia McKnight’s work reveals a sense of magic in the natural world. Combining the soft seepage of wool with delicate and unforgiving porcelain, Lost in a forest is a darkly humorous object that is both beautiful and disturbing. It appears like a mental map to a strange and erotic terrain where fears and desires emerge as eerie dreamscapes. Informed by concepts of transformation and the interconnectedness of all things, McKnight’s work speculates on the nature of being by referring to the everyday alchemy of growth and decay.
WILLIAM UPCHURCH Having to Leave [detail]
Charcoal and pastel on swag canvas 218cm x 116cm. $3,000 Nicola reflects on having to leave family and friends as she moves to Perth for study. This is the fourth portrait in a series on scavenged swag canvas. I began relating the swag to my move away from home when I discovered it working in the Kimberley region.
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ď„€ SHELLEY COWPER Bridging the Abyss
Mixed media with woodcut and intaglio 85cm x 108cm x 2cm. $1,200 A metaphorical work that contemplates a place we may sometimes arrive at when things change or a choice has to be made. The abyss, a deep chasm with unfathomable depths, often seems impassable but there is usually a way over or around it.
BEVAN HONEY ď„ Seed Stitch (Horizon)
Wood, nails and oxidisation 220cm x 340cm x 3cm. $12,000
Seed Stitch (Horizon) is made from the side panels of found cray pots, placed on the wall in a repetitive manner to form a pattern reminiscent of lattice or of a knitted garment. Both the material and the title of the work refer to our fundamental relationship with the land and sea for provision of our food and shelter. Seed Stitch (Horizon) is a simple knitting form that references warmth and shelter, whilst wooden cray pots are structures designed to catch food; both reflect notions of work and toil in our everyday existence.
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MIKAELA CASTLEDINE Master and Commander
Crocheted polypropylene steel and leather 92cm x 110cm x 35cm. $9,500 Much of my work centres around the complex and inextricable relationships between humans and animals, how we think of them, how we use them and how we completely rely on them. Crocheting sculptures is an organic process, part meditation, part evolution, part role-playing. Master and Commander began as an exploration of my longing to visit the eagle hunters of Mongolia to experience the way they hunt using horses and eagles but turned into a comment on the way that the animals may not necessarily require humans in the equation and could form their own mythological, symbiotic relationships.
DOREEN CHAPMAN Untitled
Acrylic on canvas 71cm x 71cm. $950
“Been born Jigalong. Big sister for my son, Dennis Thomas. [S]He been come this way, Hedland. Doreen, me, from Karntimarta. I been bring him here. Little girl [s]he start painting, Warralong. [S]he looking… looking… [s]he quick painter, quickly, looking, looking. No fishing, no hunting, no car, painting, painting every day eh? You been bring ‘em, [s]he painting, painting, painting! (laughs)” - Maywokka May Chapman (mother) Doreen started painting with her mother and she first exhibited with Martumili artists in 2010. In recent years, she has spent more time in Port Hedland and began painting at the Spinifex Hill Studios. As a deaf woman, painting is a crucial medium of communication and storytelling.
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JEANA CASTELLI Man’s Footprint
Acrylic on canvas 92cm x 122cm x 4cm. $2,900 There is a certain surreal beauty and irony in the open cut mining process that the beauty of our natural environment emerges with each layer of environmental destruction. As an artist, I feel that I have a responsibility and need to express a loss of connection and empathy with our natural environment.
RACHEL WEAVER The Hound of Uncanny Valley
Editioned photographic print on rag paper with deckled edges 33cm x 50cm. $799 Through the camera I look beyond the recognisable world in which I so often feel out of place, making it my own by transforming it into a disturbing and twisted version of itself. Influenced by the unrelenting anxiety that never leaves me completely and the resulting nightmares it fuels, I find a strange sense of comfort within these distorted realities.
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LORETTA EGAN Leaning Tree [detail]
Acrylic on canvas 72cm x 152cm x 4cm. $3,500 I’m originally from the Mid West and while growing up in Geraldton, the leaning tree was a land mark for me. Whenever I was returning home to Geraldton and I saw the leaning tree, I knew I didn’t have far to go. I have always been fascinated in the changes in this old tree over the years.
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JONATHAN DU BOULAY Private Gerard Henderson Cowan - 1917 [detail] Oil on canvas 102cm x 77cm x 2cm. $2,000
Private Gerard Henderson Cowan of Narngulu, enlisted in 1916 with the Australian Imperial Forces; serving with the 11th Australian Infantry Battalion that sailed for France and the frontline. In this painting you can see through Gerard’s eyes...glimpses of the horror of bloody trench warfare that took place at Pozières in the Somme Valley and the trenches near Ypres in Flanders. In February 1919, whilst engaged in patrolling the front-line, Gerard died of pneumonia and was buried in St. Omer, one week before he was to set sail for home.
OLGA CIRONIS Listening to the Silence [detail] Mixed media 200cm x 150cm x 4cm. $3,500
The work I propose reflects my time spent on the coast between Cliff Head and Geraldton, in shacks, where I fell in love with the wild summer and stormy winter ocean, the sweet smell of the coastal bush and the shifting community. In this work I incorporate text stitched onto fabric that references human experience and connection to place.
CAM FITZGERALD When the Writing is on the Wall [detail] Polypropylene rope 400cm x 100cm x 5cm. $2,500
These elements are unique and alien. Random tangles of fibre melt together into a single form, fragile in its new state, easily torn or pulled apart though it has come from something strong. Rope; its very nature is to bind and secure like strong emotional ties and when we change the nature of how they are formed, these entanglements can become hard to decipher, like a foreign language. When this appears like writing on the wall it implies that failure will ensue. Foolish to ignore such realisation, we rarely see it clearly or understand what is written before us.
CHARLENE CARRINGTON Buffalo Hole - My Father’s Country
Natural pigments, ochre and bloodwood sap on Belgian linen 120cm x 180cm x 4cm. $8,500
This is my father’s country, Buffalo Hole. This is the place he liked because his baby sister, my Aunty Nancy, was born there under a boab tree in this area. In blackfella way, the top ranges in the painting are called Barlangard and the middle area is Milling Milling. The river (black line) runs to Horse Creek and in Milling Milling there is a special rock art site depicting first sightings of white man. My dad was a traditional owner for Buffalo Hole and all of Texas. He taught me about my culture, country and how to paint.
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JOIE VILLENEUVE Antipodean Arias
SARAH THORNTON-SMITH Tapestry [detail]
The transformation taking place in this current body of work is a reflection of me slowing down and experiencing the complexities of life. The theme of Antipodean Arias has been transmuted into metaphoric visual poesies that emerge from a heavily textured, mixed-media surface. In describing this new work as “visual poesies” it is best to say they are like the essence of a whale’s song and less about the physical nature of a whale.
Consisting of twelve colourwaves, whereby gouache is manipulated in gradations from one hue to another hue, Tapestry captures the nuances of the undulating light, darkness and shadows of the interweaving forms of the cuts and folds of the paper. Inspired by the colours of the Mid West region during the winter months, the fabric of the landscape is explored by the visual warp and layered weft of interlocking optical explorations. Through her choice of hues and tones, Sarah Thornton-Smith attempts to capture, reflect and give celebration to the Australian landscape.
Mixed media 90cm x 90cm x 5cm. $3,300
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Gouache on paper 61cm x 61cm x 4cm. $1,900
TRACEY RAMSAY No Name (Warraban)
Natural pigments, synthetic pigment, ochres and acrylic on canvas 150cm x 150cm x 4cm. $901 That bat and the crocodile had a fight and that bat bin spear that crocodile and killed him. And that short-neck turtle got a string and Paperbark tree, put the crocodile on his back and took him to another place - (which I can’t talk about, because my dad taught me not to talk for another’s country). The cave there in that hill is where that bat lived, and nowadays, there’s a lot of bats and crocodile and turtle in that area. Black bream too. That place is called “No Name”, and is in Bow River Country.
CHRISTOPHE CANATO Farandole
Digital photograph 100cm x 150cm x 5cm. $2,200 Christophe Canato’s work examines the role and identity of male gender in our contemporary societies. His narrative photographs explore physical identities within social context such as cultural, politics and religion. Farandole not only reflects a queer perspective but it is also a demonstration of the power of staging the male body in order to deliver physical and emotional compositions such as idolatry, leadership, fantasies, grotesque or oppressiveness. It is the double meaning and the confusion that can be hidden behind these compositions that interest the artist. The way in which imagery elevates the status of individuals.
HELEN CLARKE Waterhole
Reduction linocut print 36cm x 50cm. $970 Waterhole is a reduction lino limited edition print, created by hand printing approximately 14 layers of ink over each other. Between each colour, the lino is cut away enabling the earlier colours to be revealed. These layers echo the layering that I see in the landscape, from the strip of sky, to the trees in the background, to the line of taller eucalypts, to the waterhole and reeds in the foreground. I never tire of exploring our amazing landscape, seeing the distant vistas and the close up environment.
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SAMUEL COMBES Girl and Guinea Fowl
Acrylic 61cm x 51cm x 2cm. $400 I created this portrait as a representation of the Mid West and the memories that took place in it. The piece reflects on the then, and the now; the Guinea Fowl, a reminder of my own childhood and the figure, my sister, and a representation of her childhood. The painting contrasts our experiences growing up in rural Mid West Australia.
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ADAM DERUMS A Night Of Sighs, A Morning Of Fresh Tears [detail] Oil on canvas 225cm x 128cm x 4cm. $18,000
Central to the aim of producing an aesthetic experience that offers alternative ways of knowing is the grasp and slippage of time. My work is constructed meticulously over hundreds of hours with an obsessive approach to the labour of production which allows me to be in the experience of the work. I feel I no longer consciously make the artwork but rather, exist in the moment of its making. This enables me to negotiate an internal space unfettered by reason and the arbitrary nature of language and thus opening the way for an experience of infinite mystery.
NICOLE SLATTER & BRUCE SLATTER Vantage Oil on board 120cm x 106cm x 2cm. $3,400
Vantage is a collaborative painting that draws from the palpable lived experiences of suburban landscape. The graphically painted climbing frame motif juxtaposed with a deep and infinite palm canopy hopes to enact a sensory attunement available through suburban experiences. The motif of canopy and climbing frame are both familiar yet alien allowing for the painting to enact vision and tactility with both abstract and figurative intent. We hope for Vantage to engage the viewer with a force of feeling heightened and possible through suburban experience.
MARK NODEA Going Back Country
Natural pigments and ochres on Belgian linen 120cm x 180cm x 4cm. $5,400 This is my mother’s country (Texas Downs Station). Going back on Country. It’s like going back 40,000 to 80,000 years ago, looking at the mountains, hills, rivers and gorges. Our great ancestors survived - hunted and also slept on this rugged country of the Kija people. They had a better life. Healthy, sharing foods, ceremony and culture. Today, living at Warmun, our younger ones are losing their lives because of drugs and alcohol. Back 40-80,000 years ago, our young ones grew up. Adults. Going back to Kija Country gives us strength, makes us very strong.
ROY MERRITT Sunset Beach [detail] Knitted wool 50cm x 250cm. $700
I live at Sunset Beach, right on the river mouth here in Geraldton. In my work blue blends with the Chapman River and the White is the sand of the bay. It’s a very special technique this knitting which I call “Daisy Work”. I’ve never found anyone else who can do it. Doing Daisy Work is physical and keeps me fit in my old age. I’m an 80yr old Yamaji elder from the Wajarri tribe.
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SUSANNA CASTLEDEN On Opposite Sides Of The World, When Vision Begins To Stutter. Gesso, screen print and graphite on rag paper 78cm x 224cm. $3,600
This work is part of a project that was created in two locations 20,000km apart; a physical separation as far as our worldly limits allow. In this work, the lighthouses at Cape Palliser in New Zealand and Santander in Spain are presented opposite each other, joined by their respective oceans. When standing in the autumnal dusk, I watched the lights beat, knowing that on the opposite side of the world, spring was emerging and in 12 hours’ time the corresponding antipodal rhythm would commence.
ZAC BRUCE The Wunder Years
Video 10min. $860
When in doubt we subconsciously fall back on films, books and cultural myths to make sense of the incomprehensible and the arbitrary. We cast ourselves as the protagonists of our own stories, each one a Frankenstein of consumed content, summoned from the muddy banks of memory to help us cope with the complexities of reality. In The Wunder Years, I use 8mm film and soundscapes to explore my own narrative, and confront the limitations of using pop culture to forge meaning from chaos.
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LYNDA FYNN DICKINSON Life in a Western Town Mixed media on Belgian linen 92cm x 120cm x 3cm. $2,300
To capture the ambience of a Mid West lifestyle I’ve used derived shapes to encapsulate key industries and leisure spots in the area. The interconnection of potentially disparate shapes, joined using colour, line, density and movement, reflects diversity and individuality — a farmer might also be a golfer; a docker might fish on the Abrolhos (bottom right). My process was analogous to the changing landscape and passage of time: the underpainting was overlaid with shaped structures, and the artwork rendered in an artisanal way to reflect its sometimes industrial/agricultural nature. In parallel, I felt human impact upon the environment can sometimes add visual appeal and a sense of well-being.
LEON HOLMES Twisted
Oil on canvas 75cm x 100cm x 5cm. $7,500 A recent five week outdoor painting trip to the Kimberley region inspired a body of work, one of which is the painting Twisted. I was taken by the unique shape of this tree and the way the light was bouncing and reflecting off the landscape. I feel it is a good representation of the heat and the glow of our country. The work has been created using high-quality handmade oil paints on recycled canvas.
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SARAH MILLS The “When They Bring Me Home” Report Digital photograph 101cm x 203cm. $2,500
Representing a one-year-old child forcibly removed from her mother (her nest) as part of the Stolen Generation. She is surrounded by a flash into her future where she plays with the bones of native wildlife, stroking what she will come to realise is the death of her culture, language and identity, and loved ones lost. Like a dream, all elements sit aesthetically embedded within stark whiteness to represent the segregation between European and Indigenous Australia, showcasing the significant influence and destruction one has had over the beautiful but severely traumatized, and damaged, other.
LEXIE LAZENBY Capillum [detail]
Androgenous hair, Horse hair, Taraxycum Erythrospermum seed, stitch, acrylic shelf 15cm x 300cm x 20cm. $1,000 An age related collection of delicate vessels formed as a celebration of maturity. Beautifying that which I have spent a lifetime removing and being ashamed of accompanied by tiny wishes, wishes that exist in youth, but drift away with age.
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SAM BLOOR Reflections (2)
High vis vest, drop sheet, ratchet strap, painters tape, line marking aerosol, house hold acrylic and pastel on canvas 83cm x 59cm x 4cm. $990 “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.” - A TALE OF TWO CITIES.
CAMILLA LOVERIDGE Surrender, Be Still... [detail]
Graphite, silverpoint ground and charcoal on Clayboard 63cm x 47cm x 3cm. $1,100
My father now ninety, though tenacious and cognizant, is physically frail and almost blind. His daily solace has become the embrace of a shower, with its reassurance of warmth and intimacy. As I care for him, I reflect on the needs we all have as humans – to be loved and respected, irrespective of our years. I think of infants, enveloped in stillness and the reassurance of their nursing mothers. The milky, silverpoint ground poured over this image references this comfort, and my father’s return to stillness and a warm embrace.
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BEHZAD ALIPOUR Disposition
Graphite on watercolour paper 75cm x 56cm. $2,900 We carry our early childhood’s mental and emotional impacts through to our adulthood. While the shadow of these past events still resides within us, their origins remain unresolved and sometimes neglected, suppressed or denied. I explore my subject matter’s stories via their relationship with their autobiographical object, particularly those personal items that they have held close since childhood. I use this relationship as a medium to communicate my personal narrative.
TOM FREEMAN Pineapple Fountain Valley Path
Acrylic on plywood 110cm x 250cm x 5cm. $2,800
This painting diptych extends from Freeman’s ongoing art practice, attempting to construct an internal universe and work within this in a selfreferential and circularly perpetuating way. Each artwork is made in relation to previous work, picking up on forms, materials, surfaces and colours and mutating these through processes over time. Ideas are picked up from memories and histories, sights and experiences, conversations and cultural surrounds, and always returning through the filter of the artist’s mind and hands.
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ď„€ SUZANNE BLAKE Intrepid [detail]
Acrylic on canvas 177.5cm x 94cm x 4cm. $2,880 Having lived in various parts of coastal Western Australia all my life, the colours of the natural landscape around me have influenced the spirit of this piece. As I have gotten older and had the opportunity to travel, each time I return home I am reminded of the intrepid beauty here; the perpetual confluence of the earth meeting water and the soft colours that define it. Salt, sand dunes, water, low vegetation and bursts of colour from the flowers.
LYNNETTE BOWRON ď„ Feast Foreshore [detail]
Ink pen on paper 70cm x 121cm. $1,600
The concept of using lunch bags came about when I would wait for my son who was an apprentice boat builder at the Wharf here in Geraldton. I would start drawing the genre scenes around me with a pen, I sketched whatever was within my view at the time. To me, the lunch bag represents, gathering together socially, containing a variety of foods you can purchase at the different outlets along the foreshore. I feel there is an authentic juxtaposition between the social communion and the simplicity of my visual representations by employing this medium.
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JO DARBYSHIRE From Wireless Hill to VK6RGN
JENNIFER COCHRANE Impossible Shadow #9
DAN BURKE DOA
My paintings often explore the social history of places, not in a didactic way, but I aim for a more evocative feeling of place though the materiality of oil paint. Recently I’ve been visiting Wireless Hill on the banks of the Swan River in Perth. In 1912 Wireless Hill was razed of its native bush and a tall telecommunications tower was built so that Western Australia could communicate with the rest of the world through sound waves. All that’s left of those heady days of telecommunication are wildflowers growing among the few concrete blocks and old lead cables in the sand and a small but passionate amateur radio club.
Impossible Shadow #9 is part of an ongoing exploration into shadows, in particular shadows of sculptural works I have created in the past. I am interested in removing the shadow from the form that generated it and placing it within a new environment. This work was produced by projecting the shadow of a linear cube onto steps and then fabricating it in steel rod. The impossible shadow has become a threedimensional form again.
As it travelled from Exmouth to Fremantle, this car had unwittingly collected some unfortunate specimens. Taken in the early morning light in Geraldton.
Oil on canvas 225cm x 128cm x 4cm. $6,600
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Steel rod, powder coated 73cm x 85cm x 16cm. $3,300
Archival print on fibre rag paper 81cm x 73cm. $1,250
ELLIOT BROWN Missed Connection Photograph 91cm x 61cm. $650
The city provides an empty canvas, awaiting further exploration of ideas and stories. Being drawn to light and shadow merges two of my favourite photographic elements and ultimately contributes to creating the most ambience for a scene. We make many connections in our day-to-day lives and this piece explores the idea of missing those potential connections. My artistic approach is characterized by seeking and observing light as I travel through the city and create scenes that interest me. This approach is distant yet personal; seeking beauty in the mundane and finding inspiration in the day-to-day lives of others.
JULIE-ANN BROWN Billabong
Oil on linen 100cm x 150cm x 4cm. $5,500 Despite the repetitive cycles of seasonal flow rushing down, across and becoming still, then draining away, the distinctive ochre palette of the Australian billabong remains unchanged, unique. Water enhances the rock surfaces, smoothed by generations of nature’s gentle sculpting, irregular but at the same time conforming, working together to retain its bold identity of colour and shape creating a mesmerising labyrinth.
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GEOFF OVERHEU Flatlands - End of Summer [detail] Oil paint, wire 100cm x 200cm x 40cm. $5,200
My interest is in energy within the soil - the formal surface as macro and micro, with painted lines of energy crossing the surface.
MARINA BAKER Street Suite #1: Walking Pace
Oils on sketch paper 86cm x 405cm. $3,200
The walking pace of moving things through and past, allows the image to “pull focus”, the rest petering out as the gait continues and another remnant or momentary detail comes into view. The painting is made and undone in an ambulatory rhythm, the partial coalescence of form, colour, gesture and place rendering the famillar as something else, with personal sense and reason, yet still, coming into view as out of a mist.
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ď„€ DONELLE HALLIGAN Eucalyptus Macrocarpa Watercolour on rag paper 56cm x 76cm x 8cm. $650
A study of the celebration of the Macrocarpa.
JARRAD MARTYN ď„ Signals
Oil on canvas 30cm x 40cm. $600
Signals explores the pre and post sinking representation of the HMAS Sydney II, which was sunk in 1941, with the wreck not found until 2008. A lot of the imagery circulating online image archives was of the sunken wreck of the HMAS Sydney II, a representation characterised by a ghostliness. Situated in the centre of the composition is a sailor from the Sydney hanging up clothes to dry, a common domestic practice. Bringing the two images together encourages the audience to connect the event more with the weight of the real-time trauma while still acknowledging the mystery surrounding the sinking.
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NIKKI LUNDY Absent
Balga tree resin, earth pigment, ochre, charcoal and epoxy resin set on perspex, builders line and wooden dowel 140cm x 300cm x 10cm. $550 Absent is a material investigation of Miriwoong Country in WA’s Kimberley region, specifically the township of Kununurra. While existing on a material level, Absent elicits notions of the displacement, loss and deprivation that is apparent since the settlement of the town in the 1960s.
JONATHAN DU BOULAY Private Gerard Henderson Cowan - 1918 [detail] Oil on canvas 82cm x 122cm x 2cm. $2,000
Private Gerard Henderson Cowan of Narngulu, enlisted in 1916 with the Australian Imperial Forces; serving with the 11th Australian Infantry Battalion. After going through several actions, Gerard was seriously wounded while assisting to bring in the wounded under fire. After a long convalescence, he transferred to the Australian Flying Corps and attained the rank of Lieutenant in the No. 2 Squadron. In February, 1919, whilst engaged in patrolling the Front-line, Gerard died of pneumonia and was buried in St. Omer, one week before he was to set sail for home.
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MICHELLE MCKOY Kashmir Egret in Flight
Photograph 103cm x 168cm. $3,500 I travelled to Kashmir in India to spend time creating some new images. This photo was taken after the first heavy rains for the season bucketed down on Dal Lake. I took an early morning shikara ride, to quietly float by photographing the abundant bird life. I changed the settings on my camera to a slow shutter speed. I used this technique to capture the movement of the bird’s wings. This created a slightly abstract, more artistic and unique image of the egret, as she took flight. There were lots of misses and unsuccessful attempts before getting this image which I love.
JEREMY BLANK Masked Borders (Skins) [detail]
Ochres, Oils, UV pigment, graphite, varnish and emulsions on canvas 120cm x 240cm x 2cm. $7,500 The Masked Border series incorporates West Australian raw ochres with hand ground UV pigments and western oil mediums, fusing traditional and contemporary media in symbolic forms. This Diptych juxtaposes two variants of the series’ focus. The borders are real, symbolic and subconscious. The three photos include the diptych as whole work and each canvas as detail.
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MARK MIRAGLIOTTA Vacuous
Polymer plastic lids, plywood 190cm x 330cm x 50cm. Available for site specific commissions. Vacuous 1. Having or showing a lack of intelligence; mindless. Vacuous diverts and interrupts the regular traffic flow. ‘You can’t go this way anymore!’ screams the vivid red polymer plastic against the beige classical façade. The gallery portico is blocked by ‘bait box’ lids from craypots collected from the Mid West coast. Is the currently besieged West Australian Rock Lobster Industry truly sustainable if they continue to contribute plastics in our oceans? What do we put in? What do we take out?
DENISE PEPPER Perlee Bateau
Pate de verre cast glass 57cm x 95cm x 20cm. $5,000 Perlee Bateau honours the endurance of those working in the craft of beading embroidery. I have created my small round glass beads as traditional conteria beads with subtle colour variance for this work. Beads have become symbolic to us and often used for indulgent embellishment, a luxury and have been traded globally for centuries. The art piece’s beaded surface creates an ornate lace pattern kiln fused to the pate de verre structured vessel.
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CORBAN CLAUSE WILLIAMS Kaalpa Well 23 Acrylic on canvas 91cm x 91cm. $1,600
“Kaalpa is my grandfather Ngurra where they walked, hunting bush tucker. I went there for the first time this year on a Martumili and KJ trip. I went hunting there, got a parnajalpa (goanna). When I went there I was pukurlpa (happy) it makes you open up your spirit, it feels like home. It’s got kapi there, a well, jurnu (soak) and tuwa (sandhills)” Kaalpa is a place of great cultural significance for Martu, is also referred to as Well 23 on the canning stock route
NICOLE DICKERSON The Light Between Black & White [detail] Acrylic on seashells 62cm x 52cm x 5cm. $700
As life shows its darkness, As the time moves by so fast, Every little detail is shown, Through only black and white, If only there was more colour, Like the rainbows that we see, But they only really appear, After all our stormy days, You can’t have one, Without the other, That’s just how it be.
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BJOERN RAINER-ADAMSON Put Your Red Shoes On [detail] Mono imprint 280cm x 280cm. $3,580
Put your red shoes on inspired by the David Bowie music video “Let’s Dance” (1993). This artwork tells the story of the cautious steps immigrants take in attempting to find their feet in a foreign culture. It is a faltering search between their innate inheritance and the effort to understand the new cultural identity into which they fall. It looks like a clumsy dance to a very complex rhythm which is simultaneously incomprehensible and yet also essentially ecstatic. Using my own body to disrupt a very fragile surface facilitated the creation of an eerie feeling of an almost actual presence as well as an impression of motion and the emotional struggle of finding home.
WADE TAYLOR Lancelin, 6pm [detail]
Oil on linen 110cm x 87cm x 5cm. $1,500 This work centres on a familiar yet unsettling quality to the contemporary Australian landscape; a kind of peculiar emptiness ubiquitous in WA suburbia and rural centres. These sites are suffused with resonant histories and narratives that are not always explicit, but lingering. It suggests the charged nature of vacant non-spaces and their ability to evoke human physicality. Through figurative omission, landscapes can often describe the unseen and residual. Such positioning suggests a tension that plays between the stillness and the promise of abandoned spaces and pedestrian scenes.
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EMMA BUSWELL In My Minds Eye You Looked Different, or Perhaps it’s Just the Distance [detail] Hand-knitted tshirts, recycled yarn and pewter 80cm x 300cm x 2cm. $2,500
This work is a meditation on what it means to have first felt a place and the dissonance one feels with reconciling its image as part of a greater represented landscape. Recalling the celebratory 1980’s kitsch tradition of rendering iconic Australian landscapes in knitted baggy jumpers, this work examines the disconnect between the lived and felt experience of a place and its representation in popular culture implicated by the geo-tourism industry.
ANDY QUILTY You Can See the Treetops From in Here #11
Graphite on Arches paper 115cm x 150cm x 1cm. $2,800
In recent years I’ve formed a working relationship with a prisoner who is an artist and masters candidate serving a life sentence. Visits to the jail entailed a bizarre return journey between constructed artificial prison spaces and the native bushland directly outside the prison walls, acknowledged by my incarcerated peer who once mentioned to me “You can see the treetops from in here.” There is an absurdity to this spatial narrative considering the token gesture of naming WA prisons after native flora, whilst enacting policies that hyper incarcerate in oppressive, dehumanising artificial environs.
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ANNA LOUISE RICHARDSON Little Big Rocks Charcoal on cement fibreboard 130cm x 160cm x 3cm. $3,000
Little big rocks is an exploration of WA’s historical records on meteorite impact sites. Of 176 confirmed impacts worldwide, WA contains 11 of 30 Australian sites, including Dalgaranga crater in the Gascoyne: Australia’s smallest crater, situated on Dalgaranga Station once occupied by the Richardson family. Although believed to be created by a 20,000kg mesosiderite only 1.1kg were found. Reportedly they were used as a doorstop for years before being handed to the Western Australian Museum. This work pays homage to the insignificant remains of a considerable impact, whose constituents have been reduced to dust and scattered by the forces of erosion.
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ROGER DICKINSON On a plate (self-portrait)
Digital print on aluminium 80cm x 80cm x 3cm. $2110 This is one in a series of digital drawings of iconic consumer items that have a memorable impact upon my life. In the first half of the 20th century, speed graphic plate cameras represented the cutting edge of imaging and were used heavily by professional photographers. Acknowledging the camera’s technical sophistication, I created the artwork using current technology (drawn with a stylus and graphics tablet, and printed by dye sublimation on high-gloss aluminium). Learning to use an elderly and complex speed graphic in the 1970s was a seminal phase in my personal development as a photographer and artist, becoming an integral part of my identity.
SASKIA BLAKE Blue Sky Mine [detail]
Acrylic on canvas 90cm x 30cm x 3cm. $150 I painted this artwork in response to the town of Wittenoom and its history with mining blue asbestos. I juxtaposed two historic images of the town into one image. The eerily perfect blue sky is a contrast to the outdated, environmentally unstable and dangerous type of asbestos mining that took place. The title refers to the song by Midnight Oil which references the human aspects after the mine was shut down.
The Mid West Art Prize was established in 2011, under the direction of James Davies. It continues to be GRAG’s flagship exhibition and one of WA’s most prestigious art prizes.
Some of the artists featured in this year’s Mid West Art Prize
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A CITY OF GREATER GERALDTON GALLERY
24 Chapman Road, Geraldton WA 6530 P (08) 9956 6750 artgallery@cgg.wa.gov.au