The 24th Brett Whiteley Travelling Art Scholarship has been awarded to six young Australian painters: Mark Maurangi Carrol, Sarah Drinan, Bill Hawkins, Miranda Hine, Drew Connor Holland, and Flin Sharp. Each recipient will receive $10,000 as part of the scholarship.
Following a two-year hiatus due to COVID-19-related travel restrictions, the Art Gallery of New South Wales has this year awarded one artist a three-month residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris and five artists a two-week residency at Shark Island Institute Kangaroo Valley, New South Wales.
Installation view of Brett Whiteley Travelling Art Scholarship 2022, Brett Whiteley Studio, Sydney
This year’s Cité recipient is Bill Hawkins from Coburg, Victoria, who also receives $40,000 in funding to further his art education while in Europe.
Guest artist judge Mitch Cairns selected the eleven finalists and six scholarship recipients from 187 entries. Cairns said it was an honour to judge the 2022 Brett Whiteley Travelling Art Scholarship: “The finalists comprising the 2022 scholarship collectively mark the very healthy state of painting being produced by emerging artists in Australia today.”
Speaking about Hawkins’ winning body of work, Cairns said: “I found the works to be utterly compelling, alive in their surface quality and capacity to destabilise my painting mind. The works are at once rich and reserved; both sensitive to the historical lineages of painting, while remaining at peace with their own personal artistic entanglement.”
The Paris residency for Hawkins will take place from July to September 2023, whilst the five Shark Island recipients commence their residency in Kangaroo Valley in November 2022. The Brett Whiteley Studio has produced a curriculum, various events, and programs to support the artists in developing new bodies of work.
Art Gallery of New South Wales director Michael Brand said that with the return of international travel it was exciting to be able to once again offer young artists opportunities to broaden their artistic horizons.
‘I’m delighted that we can again take full advantage of this scholarship’s potential to provide an artist the chance to further their art practice abroad, while continuing the unique local element of the scholarship successfully offered in 2020 and 2021 thanks to the ongoing generosity of Shark Island Institute Kangaroo Valley,’ Brand said. ‘With both the overseas and local residencies being awarded in 2022, I’m proud that we can provide more young artists with exceptional, formative experiences than we’ve been able to offer in the past.’
Established in 1999 by the late Beryl Whiteley, the Brett Whiteley Travelling Art Scholarship commemorates the profound effect international travel and study had on her son, artist Brett Whiteley, who won the Italian Government Travelling Art Scholarship at the age of 20.
Scholarship recipient artworks will be on display at the Brett Whiteley Studio in Sydney’s Surry Hills until 27 November 2022, along with works by other finalists Amelia Carroll, Brodie Cullen, Emily Galicek, Nina Radonja and Oliver Scherer.
Alongside the works in this exhibition, visitors to the Brett Whiteley Studio will also be able to view Brett Whiteley: Blue and White, which presents a rare focus on the artist’s ceramics, along with related prints and drawings, and explores the importance of the colour blue in his art.
