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Home → Associated Groups → Wattspace → Exhibition 12.06

30 August - 17 September 2006

 

The UoN Services Limited and Watt Space present the 2006 Watt Space Annual Student Acquisitive Art Prize….

 

The Inquirer



 

Exhibition to be opened and prizes awarded by judges, artists Mike Parr and Liz Coats and director of the Newcastle Region Art Gallery Nick Mitzevitch on Thursday 31 August at 7pm at Watt Space.


As much as art pursues questions about human thought and condition, it also manages the crises apparent in absolute answers.  The Inquirer may be artist or viewer.  He or she doesn’t stop before its subject, admire the composition and move on, but locates the riddle and works out the hammerlock to solve it.

 

Acquiring an Artwork

In this exhibition the entire gallery will be used for the display of artworks entered into the Watt Space Annual Student Acquisitive Art Prize.  The Prize which in its early years was held in the Shortland Union building at the University is sponsored by the UoN Services Limited  with the winning artwork being acquired by the Union collection.

 

Judges

Traditionally the Prize is judged by two artists, one local and one from away, however this year with the possibility of Watt Space’s closure due to the VSU legislation, and its later survival, it seemed an apt time to celebrate this generous prize with high profile judges. One of Australia’s most well-known multi-disciplined artists Mike Parr has a history of Newcastle appearances and painter Liz Coats has just last semester completed a residency at the University of Newcastle’s Ourimbah Campus before the dissolving of its Fine Arts program.  Nick Mitzevitch has long-standing ties with Watt Space Gallery, having exhibited in its inaugural show, back when the gallery was situated at its Watt Street address in 1989.  He also contributed to the gallery’s ten year retrospective publication, Watt Decade.  Nick is now the Director at Newcastle Region Art Gallery, just a stone’s throw from our own Watt Space, and along with many from over the years, is an example of Watt Space’s increasing importance in the curing of students into professionals in the local, national and international art spheres.

 

The Prize

A total of $2500 will be awarded on the evening of Thursday, 31 August by the judges over four categories: Painting, Photography/Electronic Art, 3 Dimensional Work/Installation and Works on Paper/Printmaking.  An additional $500 prize will be awarded for the acquired work giving the recipient both an encouraging sum and inclusion into an institutional collection.

some of the eighty-nine entered artworks:

     

Andrea Sirch Lost and Found  (detail) artist's hair, cotton, polyester fill: Naomi Gow Untitled (detail) acrylic on board; Franca Sibert Handle with care (detail) ceramic

     

Christian Kauter Hyponogogia (detail) lithograph: Vanessa Turton Smileyhappy (detail) acrylic on canvas; Belinda Howden Fig-uratively speaking (detail) white earthenware  

 

     

Curran James  Urbane(detail) mixed media on board: Shane Lions Seventh Floor  (detail) screen print; Lauren Potts Pale Eyes(detail) oil on canvas


 

     

Stephen Robinson  Untitled  rubber bands, wood, nylon: Elizabeth Wright Prosthesis(detail) plaster bandages, push pins, velcro; Sarah Berlot Femme Nue(detail) oil, cotton, string on canvas

 

 

 

and the winners were:



PAINTING

 

BARBARA CALLCOTT Untitled    sweets, pins, glue

 


WORKS ON PAPER/ PRINTMAKING

 

JOSEPHINA LAINA Navigator II   drypoint on paper





3 DIMENSIONAL WORK/ INSTALLATION

 

MARYAM RASHIDI Trans-dialogue  DVD projection

 

 

PHOTOGRAPHY/ELECTRONIC ART
WINNER OF THE ACQUISITIVE AWARD

 

HEIDI FREIHAUT White  DVD projection, 1 minute 39 seconds

 

 

HIGHLY COMMENDED
3 DIMENSIONAL WORK/ INSTALLATION

 

LUKE THOMPSON Pata-Physique  birdseed

 

 

VICKY HAMILTON Skulker  raku clay, raku fire


 


HIGHLY COMMENDED
PHOTOGRAPHY/ELECTRONIC ART

 

REBEKAH DAVIS Reflections  inkjet print

 

 

HIGHLY COMMENDED
WORKS ON PAPER/ PRINTMAKING

 

SARAH SYMONS Velvet Trace  inks, graphite, wood, watercolour paper




HIGHLY COMMENDED
PAINTING

 

  ANNEMARIE MURLAND River City   oil on canvas



The Catalogue Essay

Welcome to the show.   It’s the easiest way to begin, it’s why we have the wine.  After all, it’s the big one.  The Prize Show.  Once the awards have been given, and the acquired work is sized up for a space in the union halls, what is left for the next three weeks?  The gallery brims full to an expanded meniscus, self-consciously aware of its visual relativity to the antiquated salon shows of Europe.  There are first- timer exhibitors in every medium along with seasoned art makers, many of whom relax into the hang with a sense of humour.  So when it comes to awarding prizes, how is the process deemed fair?  And to what extent is “the preciousness of creation conceptualised for the sake of a prize”? as Jess Gyulay’s small painted work in the hoist queries as it accuses.  The statement raises a point.  Does the themed prize show allure to pimp local talent into compromising personal creativity for certain glory?

In each room there is an inquiring gaze, one work which seems to seek something of the others.  Each one has been chosen to set a certain stage for the rest of that exhibiting space.  The Loading Dock at first glance with its colour-coded walls seems like the curator’s easy option, a flow to the room that is easy on the eye, a glossy hang.  Emmalene Holland’s wide-eyed Untitled has seen something it wasn’t expecting, whilst Sam Galletly’s Gottingen Women in its decorative manner appears looking for seduction.  This roomconcerns the explorations of the artists into their materials, aspects of interiors and exteriors, the relationships between, the shadow and light, reflection, along with them the inquiring nature of our society, and this once science-fiction dream of constant surveillance.  Sarah Cockroft’s Bleached Liv Negs remind of surveillance shots or perhaps some forensic evidence, x-rayed for any information lost on the naked eye, night vision perhaps, their subject unwitting.  The cars driving in the fog are also surveyed in Christine Harvison’s painting and Trevor Horsnell’s The Bench is obviously under attention.  Luke Thurgate’s investigation into what at first seems to be a romantic study of the interior of the face becomes so much more as he excavates not only the workings of our masks but the ephemeral nature of drawing, his own practice and the grounds of his canvases, the gallery walls. 
The Locker room seems to offer interest in absence, as explorations of space and time take place.  Heidi Freihaut’s White explores the space which, after this minimal expose, can only be described as sublime, investigated by a single figure feted compositional tool. Maryam Rashidi’s performance Trans-dialogue allows no direct eye contact or that of the physical self, but instead is focussed on the trace memory, taught action as evidence of an immortality realised through ancestry.

When Kosuth wrote about the art of the twentieth century replacing trends in philosophy practise I assumed that he was talking in theoretical bases.  However with the University of Newcastle’s dissolving of the Masters in Fine Art or MFA candidacy program replaced by the more generic* Masters in Philosophy, I’m not so sure.  Barbara Callcott has in definite terms concluded that this is in fact detrimental to the University’s PR policies and has so outlined in her Submission accompanied by a fitting sweet FA in her Untitled.  The uneasy Gaze of Siobhan in Deanne Davidson’s acrylic portrait falls on Curran James’ Urbane as if unsure of its purpose, the assemblage appearing to grow almost violently, colonising the space from a point of high vantage.  The small sculptural assemblage Point of Origin  by Malcolm Van Dremt appears to investigate the cyborg through found objects, but is it actually referencing the subjectivity of humans within an objective material world?  The impact of technology on all aspects of life and culture is touted on a soapbox of cynicism in the poetic  Darryl Bowes’ TV is Smarter than Painting where the two most illusory elements to human culture are brought together in his subtle installation.  The choice to categorise the work as painting may seem troublesome at first though what medium best to critique the tradition’s apparent malaise than that of brush and paint?

In the Long Room are investigations into the natural world, geographical and biographical memory as well as the trace.  2am, Gillian Thomas’s night space study is guarded by a quaint looking St Bernard dog.  Upon closer inspection comes the realisation that Pata-physique by Luke Thompson is in fact made from seed, a direct and ironic comment on Jeff Koon’s Puppy, where one is large the other is small, one mature, the other juvenile, one in flower the other seed. This monumental work by Koons epitomised a condition of pop star art in the 90s and iconically takes guard over the Guggenheim in Bilbao. Where landscape painting holds strong traditionally in Australian art, this gnome sized token gesture seems to gibe both at once convention and contemporary styles and all whilst disrupting the certainty of the food chain. Stepping into the Media Space holds a strong memory trace, perhaps a jilted scene from a children’s story book, fears pock-marking a fearing child’s journey through Alice’s wonderland.  Most disturbing perhaps in the inquiry into the real versus the unreal, or the seductive replica as seen in Jessany Trotter’s fibre-based print of a doll’s head, this concept all the more relevant with the case of the Jean-Benet Ramsay murder case throughout the media at the moment.

 

The frontal gaze in the Hoist seems shy and almost demure, as an aside is Sexual Hangups, by Sylvia Ray at first a coat rack, then everyday objects being held up by golden penises, compromised only in their seeming virility by the distinct smell of soap.  The work is pointedly cross-referenced with the labour-focused Stitch in Time by Caitlin Sneddon, where gender is established as a theme of interest in this room.

 

Obviously the spectrum in which visual artists exist is mammoth in the contemporary global art scene, where there is a welcome audience for anything ranging from formalist technique to social commentary, biographical and historical archiving practices to pieces of political intent bordering on propaganda, not to mention the whimsical and tongue in cheek.  In an Acquisitive Prize the judging will ultimately result in the exchange of prize-money for a work, on this occasion the chosen piece will be acquired by the UoN Services Limited.  To my understanding a collection generally works toward tending a certain oeuvre, the development of a signature interest that the collector may be cultivating and so accruing value and interest in his or her possessed wealth, whether it cultural or monetary.  Unions are in place to ensure the support infrastructure and distribution of current relevant knowledge to those in part.  Therefore, it seems fit that the works acquired into the Union collection would seek to illustrate the contemporary consensus of ideas on the campus, as they happen, and so in their relevance to surrounding climate.  This being the case, it would seem that for this prize, any work coerced by its maker into concept for the prize would in fact be realising what successful art of relevance should.  That is, to be drawing or sculpting or assembling or painting in such a way as to illuminate a unique perspective into the world surrounding them.

 

Jessica Coughlan

curator

2006 Annual Student Acquisitive Art prize

 

*Callcott, B.  Submission 2006