Now in its 16th year, the ‘Cliftons Art Prize’ gives emerging artists across ten cities – Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Canberra, Adelaide, Perth, Auckland, Wellington, Hong Kong and Singapore – the opportunity to share their work with a wider audience, while providing new platforms for people to engage with art. The company’s passion for supporting the arts is reflected in the waves of submissions displayed each year, continuously certifying artistically rich culture.
This year’s list of 100 finalists has been announced. The winners are decided by an international judging panel, and include Tim Abdallah, former National Head of ART, Menzies Art Brands in Australia, Ian Hamlin, New Zealand- based artist and former President of the New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts, and Michael Nock, Hong Kong based artist and owner of Art Lease and Nockart Gallery.
Among the cohort of finalists, this year’s iteration of the award sees nine Melbourne artists pursuing abstract shapes and techniques, with some shifting the focus to the importance of family dynamics and their impact on our lives. Artists include Charlie MacRae, Ella Smart, Natalie Ord, Jason Cavanagh, Shay Downer, Julian Clavijo, Grace Huang, Tracy Roberts and Thomas Gibbs.
Highlights include Smart’s green pastel drawings on paper entitled Arid; Grace Huang’s No. 8, where she explores humour in art and the subtleties of everyday life; and Gibbs’ oil painting, Underwater Silence, that aims to ‘stumble upon the realities that are universally true to the human spirit.’
The exhibition of finalists is held across all ten venues and will continue until 15 December, 2017. With the chance to win $2,000 prize money for regional awards, and $10,000 for the overall Asia Pacific winner, the lucky winners will be announced on Thursday 30 November, 2017.
The annual awards, which were first established in 2001, are conferred by Cliftons to support the careers of promising artists, and encourages the corporate patronage of the arts. The prize is open to emerging and established artists from Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and Singapore, offering international exposure for local artists across the Asia-Pacific at all of the institution’s ten venues.