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Art Almanac congratulates Fremantle-based artist Jacobus Capone, winner of this year’s $50,000 acquisitive Mosman Art Prize, with his ethereal work Spring, 2021, a unique painting consisting of fallen golden wattle and seawater, creating an ethereal pigment wash.
Capone’s practice spans performance-based video works, photography, installation and painting. His winning entry Spring 2021 embodies his ever-present examination of the environment, using falling golden wattle and seawater that was collected each day, the combination of materials creates a glowing, shimmering yellow wash that encases the canvas.
Jacobus Capone, Spring 2021, fallen golden wattle and seawater, 150 x 130cm. Courtesy the artist and Mosman Art Gallery, Sydney
Commenting on the winning work, 2022 judge Rhana Devenport ONZM, Director of the Art Gallery of South Australia, says: “This transcendent work, simply entitled Spring 2021, extends the possibility of painting by bypassing the intermediary medium of conventional paint itself, in favour of embracing the pure form of natural substances gathered through circadian performance. Each day in October 2021 a daily ritual was adhered to by the artist; fallen wattle was collected at dawn, seawater at dusk, these substances were coalesced each evening to form a painterly wash and a painting was made; collectively and individually, they celebrate the onset of spring.”
Jacobus maintains a practice that incorporates performance, photography, video installation, painting and site-specific work. Characteristically poetic, there is a holistic nature to his undertakings which increasingly attempt to integrate all action, however perceived by others, into the wholeness of one lived experience.
Further awards included the Margaret Olley Commendation Award $6,000, given to Dianne Tchumut (Mulingi, NT) for Turtles Hibernating; the Allan Gamble Award $3,000 given to Eliza Gosse (Sydney) for Almost Kareela; and the Guy Warren Emerging Artists’ Award $2,000 given to Sebastian Galloway (Hobart) for Summer Arrangement in Suspended Animation.
The 2022 Mosman Art Prize finalist exhibition features ninety-one paintings, on view at Mosman Art Gallery, Sydney, until 2 October 2022.
