2017 Sidney Myer Fund Australian Ceramic Award at SAM

Featuring shortlisted artist:

Glenn Barkley, Karen Black, Laith McGregor, Jenny Orchard and Yasmin Smith.

Congratulations to Jenny Orchard for winning the major $50,000 acquisitive prize for her work, The Imagined Possibility of Unity (2017). She populated her gallery with such wonderfully eccentric beings. See the expose of images following.

The 2017 Award was judged by Jacqueline Doughty, Curatorial Manager, The Ian Potter Museum of Art, The University of Melbourne; Jason Smith, Director, Geelong Art Gallery; and Dr Rebecca Coates, Director, Shepparton Art Museum.

Saturday 17 June to Sunday 13 August 2017

Fun road trip to SAM for the artist talks and the announcement. This prize is going from strength to strength. Selection of four Australian artists whose proposals best explored how the ceramic process can be used to flesh-out a conceptual concern. With a stipend of $2000 (I believe) and a gallery space, all four artists really invested in the opportunity and each presented a substantial solo exhibition. 

SMFACA is really a winner takes all situation and I don't disagree with the judges decision. The tension was palpable before the announcement, weighted down by the sum of the prize winnings. Made me do some mathmatical pondering. Might a increased stipend, say $5000 each by nipping off some of the 50,000, therefore giving 25,000 for the winner. 

JENNY ORCHARD

 

 

 

KAREN BLACK

 

LAITH MCGREGOR

  

 

 

GLENN BARKLEY

YASMIN SMITH

Sidney Myer Fund Australian Ceramic Award

Shepparton Art Museum

Saturday 22 August 2015 to 22 November 2015

www.sheppartonartmuseum.com.au

Another spontaneous school holiday road trip treat: the Ceramic Award. This year there is barely a vessel in sight.  Really enjoyed and was inspired by the challenge this show set for me. And that is:
how these incredible objects expand the use of material and process.
I don't envy the job of the selectors.

SAM Director Kirsten Paisley said: The five shortlisted artists are exemplary artists, each building and contributing to the use of ceramics as a medium. Their practices span historical cultural themes, revisit modernist concerns, delve into social issues and moreover each challenge our understanding of ceramic art and its positioning within contemporary practice. In this suite of five exhibitions ceramics as a process medium, a collaborative medium collided with other materials and as a material with technical limitations and extraordinary capabilities its own right will be evidenced. I congratulate each of the artists for being shortlisted for the 2015 Australian ceramic art award and look forward to working with them.

The 2015 shortlisted artists are:
Penny Byrne
Ruth Hutchinson
Sanné Mestrom
Adam John Cullen and
Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran who took out the $50,000 prize.

Penny Byrne  Returned, 2015

My work is increasingly focused on riots, public protest, conflict, and more recently with the impact of the individuals of these events. (pb)

Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran Archipelago, 2015

I use the symbol of the phallus as an anchor point to generate discussions around colonialism, religion, creation and the body. (rmn)

 Ruth Hutchinson, Hell Mouth, 2015
' ... references a 12th century drawing by an anonymous artist from an ailuinated manuscript - the Winchester Psalter (c1500). Depicting the mouth of a beast that is represented as a medieval passageway to hell." (wall text)

 Sanne Mestrom, Leftovers, 2015
'...she has drawn on the work of contemporary rather than historical artists, writing a series of letters to those that have had a formative influence on her practice. She identified international 'art heroes' and Australian colleagues, inviting them to contribute a discarded scrap, or residual form from the production of their works, which then became the organising principle for her own.' (wall text)

Clive Murray White's electrical tape

Adam John Cullen, Forever Stuff, 2015

'... Cullen casts the negative forms of vessels gleaned from opportunity shops and roadside inorganic collections, and the items are imbued with plaster, wax and concrete...(c)haracterised by exquisite textures and punctuated with coloured oxide powders, orbs, spheres and urns can also reveal layers of furniture, textiles and linoleum, or shards of ceramic plates.' (wall text)

It's an archaelogical dig, except the materials are not the remains of a past civilisation; they are the objects of my immediate surroundings, in a way they can be seen as a material history of the current day.' (ajc)