Jonny Niesche, Split Event Suneset, 2013, glitter, acrylic paint, wood, acrylic mirror Photography: Brett East
With a multitude of prizes, grants and scholarships peppering annual exhibition calendars across the country, the NSW Visual Arts Fellowship for Emerging Artists stands out as one of the most noteworthy. In spite of its cumbersome title (it is perhaps better known as its almost-equally-dense, but more memorable previous incarnation, the Helen Lempriere Travelling Art Scholarship), it attracts the state’s brightest and most promising emerging artists.
Established in 1900, the Fellowship’s respected status is in part thanks to its cash value – $30,000 to undertake self-directed career development – and because of its high-calibre band of alumni that includes SODA_JERK (2011), Lauren Brincat (2009), Todd McMillan (2006) and Claire Healy & Sean Cordeiro (2004). It also doesn’t hurt that the exhibition of finalists’ works is shown at Sydney’s influential Artspace Visual Arts Centre.
Marian Tubbs, Open Model for an Affective Landscape; Virtual Becomes Real When Necessary, 2013, video installation, decals, hardware, open frame digital C-type prints
This year’s pool of twelve finalists is an excellent selection of some of the state’s most active and hard-working early career artists. Between them, a broad spectrum of techniques, themes and approaches to artmaking is represented, with most artists embracing a range of media within their individual practices.
For Ella Barclay and Marian Tubbs, the role of technology as a filtering lens is of primary concern. Nostalgia for an unmediated experience of reality is coupled with the paradoxical use of this technology as a tool for creating art. Pia van Gelder’s work is also based in an exploration of technology: she reconfigures new and old devices to subvert their original purposes in the service of art.
Mark Shorter, Song for Glover, 2012, still from HD single channel digital video
Performance plays a pivotal role in the work of David Capra and Mark Shorter, who for this exhibition are both presenting video documentations of performances in which the artist features as protagonist. Capra tackles the role of divine healer, whilst Shorter sets out to shake up our understanding of landscape painting. Similarly, Sean Rafferty explores the mythology and representation of landscape, using a family farm in Ireland as the basis for his video and installation work.
Jamie North brings nature back into the gallery space with his sculptural work, where slag, a by-product of steel production, is reconfigured as a host for indigenous plant species. JD Reforma addresses environmental and sociological concerns, with his recent installation work invoking bottled water as a symbol for consumerism and vanity in popular culture.
Jamie North, Untitled (Slag Bowl 1), 2013, Fibre, reinforced concrete (portland cement, sand, blast furnace slag, iron oxide), moss
For Jonny Niesche and Todd Robinson, theories about art – minimalism for Niesche, and our experience of objects for Robinson – are fundamental in driving multi-faceted practices that are rooted in painting and sculpture respectively. Justine Varga is concerned with processes of analogue photography, and draws a parallel between the actual and emblematic residues captured on film. With similar reflection on his medium of choice, Tom Polo’s abstracted portrait paintings are about the act of portrait painting, and the accompanying anxieties this produces.
The winner of the 2013 Fellowship will be announced at Artspace on Thursday 3 October.
2013 NSW Visual Arts Fellowship for Emerging Artists, Tues to Sun 11am-5pm, 4-20 October 2013; ARTSPACE, 43 – 51 Cowper Wharf Road, Woolloomooloo, (02) 9356 0555, artspace.org.au
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