Last Friday, 20th September 2024, the 59th Annual Lane Cove Art Awards at Gallery Lane Cove + Creative Studios showcased a variety of impressive artworks.
The awards are conducted by Lane Cove Council in conjunction with the Lane Cove Art Society, with Australian residents able to enter a submission and showcase their artistic talent.
21-year-old Alex Xu was the Lane Cove Art Prize Winner, taking home the $15,000 prize sponsored by Lane Cove Council.
The young artist is teaching but aspires to paint for a living. She is studying for her second Master’s at the National Art School.
Alex described her winning work, ‘Birthplace,’ as a cultivation of different pictures she’s taken over time, encapsulated in one oil on canvas painting. (see our cover photo)
“I just came straight from work, and the attention is so much, but I’m very grateful and happy,” she explained to ITC, seeming blindsided by the experience.
“This one is one of my exhibitions that I went to, I went to an open artist studio, and I just like to take photos of like clutter and waste and discarding in my normal paintings. So this one, I actually made a collage. So I took many photos daily, and then I put all of those photos together to make this one. So this isn’t just one picture, it’s made out of different parts.”
In second place is Martin Claydon, an English artist who hopes to one day make a living from his art but is, in the meantime, an intermittent plasterer.
The 35-year-old studied at the National Art School in England and says his body of work on display, titled Frame, marks a bend in the road of what he usually produces.
“While I’m painting, I’m really trying to push and pursue a professional painting career, and just I feel like I’m on the verge… something like this prize helps to feel like, actually, it might be worth pursuing,” Martin told ITC.
“It’s a painting about painting, really, which takes people by surprise. It’s called Frame. And some of the objects on the table, I guess, are artificial limbs. And I was thinking about how painting is, artificially constructed. You construct the painting. There are objects in there that are reoccurring objects as well. That sort of feature is present in a lot of my work.
“There’s actually elements in here from my plaster days as well, which wasn’t necessarily conscious, but I’ve noticed that they’ve gone in. So, yeah, it’s just, you know, life informs art.”
And coming in third was Dagmar Cyrulla with her oil on linen painting titled Hotel Room during Covid I.
The artist with a Master of Fine Art Research from Monash University produced a work reflecting some of her emotions while experiencing the two-year lockdown in Melbourne during Covid.
“I felt I hadn’t said everything I wanted to with the images I had collected and been inspired by, over the years,” Dagmar said in a statement on her website.
“Covid, and the two-year lockdown we had in Melbourne, prevented me from going out and finding new material as I had intended and so I revisited older material and imbued it with the emotions that I was feeling at the time. This painting is inspired by Hopper’s 1931 work ‘Hotel Room’.”
Sponsors contributed prizes to the exhibition, including the $2000 Hyecorp Property Prize from the Hyecorp Property Group and the $1000 Centrehouse Inc. Prize for Commended Work from Centrehouse.
The exhibition also featured multiple other works of painting, drawing, and mixed-media media on display, and all submissions were available for purchase.
If you’re interested in purchasing some new, original art or perhaps just like to appreciate the medium, you can. The winning artworks and many more are on display at the current Lane Cove Art Award exhibition until Sunday, 6 October.
Gallery Lane Cove + Creative Studio Contacts Details
Address: 164 Longueville Road NSW (opposite the Library)
Phone: 9428 4898
Booking Info School Holidays: Gallery Lane Cove
Website: www.gallerylanecove.com.au
Email: [email protected]
Facebook: @gallerylanecove
Gallery Lane Cove + Creative Studios stages several exhibitions a year. Entry is FREE
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