Calleen Art Award 2012 and Central West Regional Art Award

Art by G.W. BOT

22 April to 2 June 2012

Always exciting and entertaining, the awards aim to foster and encourage originality, creativity and excellence. The Calleen Art Award was established in 1977 by Mrs Patricia Fagan, OA M. During the past 35 years, the Award has developed into a major national acquisitive art prize for painting. The 2012 Calleen Art Award is worth $16,000 and the winning work will become part of the Calleen Collection at the Cowra Regional Art Gallery. The Central West Regional Artists Award is for painting and drawing and is non-acquisitive. The Award was established in 2009 and the winner in 2012 will receive $2,000 and the opportunity of an exhibition at the Cowra Regional Art Gallery during 2013/2014.

Exhibition Opening

The award winners of the 2012 Calleen Art Award and Central West Regional Art Award were announced at the awards exhibition opening on Saturday 21 April at the Cowra Regional Art Gallery. Over 120 people attended the opening including many of the finalists. Cr Bill West, Mayor Cowra Shire Council opened the exhibition. The announcement of the award winners was by the 2012 awards judge Jason Smith, Director/CEO Heide Museum of Modern Art (Bulleen, Victoria).

This year the Gallery received 228 entries from across Australia and 60 artworks were selected as finalists.

The Calleen Art Award was established in 1977 through a gift by Mrs. Patricia Fagan OAM. Now in its 35th year the Calleen Art Award is an acquisitive award worth $16,000 through the generous support of the Calleen Trust. The Central West Regional Art Award is non acquisitive and worth $2,000. The Friends of the Gallery have also donated $500 for the People’s Choice Award which will be announced at the end of the exhibition.

“The high calibre of works by the finalists in the 2012 Calleen Art Award was striking and made the selection of one recipient for the major award particularly challenging. What I looked for was a work that kept drawing me back as a viewer. I always look for particular formal qualities of pictorial composition, balance, material sophistication and excellent technical execution. These qualities help convey the artist’s concept. Pictures, for me, must be well made in order to attract and keep the attention of my eye. Of course, subject matter and content are enormously important, and in the 2012 Award there is a spectacularly wide-range of subjects.” said Jason Smith.

2012 Calleen Art Award Winner

The winner of the 2012 Calleen Art Award is Canberra based artist G.W. Bot for her artwork Glyphs: Tree of Life 2012, watercolour and graphite on colombe paper.

Jason Smith – Judges Comments
“I selected GW Bot for the Calleen Art Award because I found her work to be deeply enigmatic. It appeared simultaneously as a moonlit nocturnal landscape with phenomena, and as a dynamic field of abstract gestures. Her work is quietly but intensely alluring. It is beautifully crafted as an object, but its materiality emphasizes the textures of landscape.” Jason Smith

G.W. Bot – Artist Statement
“Over the past few years I have thought of the landscape as a language that I have called ‘glyphs’. Glyphs constitute a language suggested by the markings found in the Australian landscape. All of my work is intimately interrelated thematically and essentially deals with questions of environments – personal and public – and an individual’s path through these environments as an allegory for a person’s passage through life”. G.W.Bot

2012 Central West Regional Art Award Winner

The winner of the 2012 Central West Regional Art Award is Hill End based artist Genevieve Carroll for her artwork The Wattle Room: Portent of the Enlarged Thought 2011, oil on canvas.

Jason Smith – Judges Comments
“I selected Genevieve’s work for the Central West Regional Art Award as it is a lively painting that celebrates the very act of painting and the manifestation in paint of thought. It has an experimental sense in terms of its painterly surface and mark-making, its definitions of solid and amorphous spaces, and its great use of colour. I found it an affirming painting.” Jason Smith

Genevieve Carroll – Artist Statement
“The still life arrangements in this painting bring together chaotic figurative and abstract compositions where objects are consumed and heightened by the use of unbounded colour. Inspired by literature, my garden and kitchen at Hill End, this is an ongoing autobiographical body of work, The Wattle Room, is concerned with understanding the psychological and seasonal landscape of where I live.”

Calleen Art Award – Highly Commended Award

  • Alison Chiam White Flower in a Jam Jar 2012, oil on canvas (Vincentia, NSW)
  • Matthew Quick Pure Tenacity 2012, oil on Italian linen (Collingwood, VIC)
  • Naomi White The Natural Land 2012, oil on canvas (Hometown, QLD)

Central West Regional Art Award – Highly Commended Award

  • Rowan Matthews Close Up Cudgegong River 2012 oil on canvas (Mudgee, NSW)
  • Anne Stanley Fragment 2011, mixed media (Cowra, NSW)

 

Image: G W Bot, Glyphs: Tree of Life 2012, watercolour and graphite on colombe paper 100cm x 100cm