From the Director - October 2024

Hello Everyone,

Thanks to all of you who visited this year's Sunshine Coast National Art Prize, and those who followed along online. It has been a pleasure to present this exhibition; now in its 19th year. We had a fantastic time at the winners' announcement on the 3rd of October, and guest judge Julie Ewington shared her insights during a special walk and talk the following day. We were lucky enough to have all four winners in attendance at both events. What a joy it was to meet them all and hear about their practices.

If you haven't yet had a chance, you can view the winning artworks online. The walk and talk is published on the gallery's YouTube channel, along with some one-on-one artist interviews that are not to be missed. And you might enjoy looking through some fun photos taken on the awards night.

Let me share a little more about this year's prize winners. We were excited that Julie Ewington was happy to be our judge this year, as she has an extensive background in Australian art both historical and contemporary. She selected one of the moving image works as the major prize winner, which is absolutely fabulous because this is only the second year that we have included new media in the entries. And this will be only the second moving image artwork added to the Sunshine Coast Art Collection, which is exciting.

As we know, artists make in so many different ways now. The winning work, No use crying over ripped lace by Todd Fuller, is made up of over 2400 sketches. He then stitched these together with a voiceover, giving the viewer sound, movement and colour, and storytelling. So contemporary and topical, given that it's to do with hatred and how people defended themselves against that. It's actually a really lovely, positive story. You can view the full video on the gallery's YouTube channel.

The thing that I really like about the winning work, is you actually have to put the headphones on and listen to the story. You can watch the visuals, as they're beautiful unto themselves - these amazing, quite energetic drawings that Todd has done. But when you listen to the narration by Coco, who is one of Australia's most loved drag queens - they have even been on RuPaul's very popular Drag Race television show - their beautiful voice over tells the story of what happened.

The other winners are amazing as well. Aylsa McHugh's highly commended artwork, Numen, is a dye sublimation print. Interestingly, Sarah collects old books and magazines, photographs and negatives, so the two figures in the images are from these really early 1930s/1940s-era photos that she has collaged with architectural elements found in a book about Japanese architecture. Aylsa specifically chose to print them on aluminium, because of the way the light reflects and changes how you view the images. I particularly like how you become a part of the work, as your image also floats into the artwork. So when you're looking at it, you become part of the work. The figures sit in space in odd and strange ways, and then when you're standing in front of it, your ghostly head floats with them.

Hyun Hee Lee, who won the artist residency with Fragments of Memories, spoke about her practice and just hearing her talk about her work was extraordinary. It added another layer to it. She actually has Korean text in her work, which she then cuts up and uses the negative space to form her collages. Her work is all about her loss of the place where she grew up and her fond memories and yearning for a place that she no longer lives in. So she creates these beautiful collages that are sort of lyrical and quiet and peaceful, with this underpinning of loss and memory. She was saying that her father and her father's father were calligraphists, so there is an interesting continuation of knowledge and drawing. Hyun then she uses the paper and thread with the idea of the thoughts and threads that fill up the world of your memory. A really lovely work.

The People's Choice winner was the lino print Country Lane by Amanda Westwood. I can understand why it won, because everybody who saw it was just blown away. It is the most detailed work and yet such a simple aesthetic. It is over a metre high and over 70 centimetres wide, a really large lino print. She actually makes them that large so that you feel you can walk into them. Amanda said this is the country lane that she walks up when she's taking her child to school, so it has captured her interest for quite some time. Another lovely element of the work is that she's very concerned about our environment and she's a lover of birds; there's actually nine or ten birds hidden within the canopy and branches of the trees, which are both present and lost because the actual carving out of the lino removes them in a way. So there's a reference to what is now gone, with the loss of habitat for birds and wildlife.

This year, we had such a high level of standard of works and it seems like every year, the bar just gets higher. And the cross section of artworks we had were amazing. The comments we received from visitors were really positive. Like I say every year, this one is my favourite and lots of people have said the same. There was this sense of colour, and this sense of joy as well. Even though some of the stories were sad, the presence of the artworks in the space was beautiful. So it was a really great show and if you missed it, bad luck but you can definitely get a sense of it through the gallery website.

And now we're launching the next exhibition, Carbon_Dating, which has its own stories to tell. The exhibition will be open from Friday 18 October to Sunday 8 December, so do come see it.

Look forward to seeing you in the Gallery…

Jo Duke
Director

Jo Duke | Photo by ben vos productions