Far North Queensland-based artist Naomi Hobson has been awarded the $30,000 2022 Geelong Contemporary Art Prize for her painting Sand dunes on the coast, 2022. The Prize is acquisitive and assists the ongoing growth of the Gallery’s collection while also promoting Australian painting and contemporary artists.
2022 Geelong Contemporary Art Prize winner: Naomi Hobson, Sand dunes on the coast, 2022, synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen. Courtesy the artist, Arthouse Gallery, Sydney and Vivien Anderson Gallery, Melbourne
The selection panel included Lisa Byrne, Director, McClelland Sculpture Park+Gallery, Kyla McFarlane, Senior Academic Programs Curator, Museums & Collections, The University of Melbourne, and Lisa Sullivan, Senior Curator, Geelong Gallery. The trio were drawn to the energy and structural complexity of Hobson’s interpretation of the natural world.
Sand dunes on the coast is representative of the artist’s distinctive style: her vibrant multi-layered compositions emerge from and convey a deep ancestral connection to the traditional lands of the Kaantju/Umpila people, on which she was born and continues to live and work (in the coastal town of Coen).
The complexity of the composition reflects the rich diversity of this landscape – from coast to wetlands to mountain ranges – and the interconnectedness of the plants, animals and people that live harmoniously within it amid changing weather patterns. Hobson’s joyful and expressive work, rendered in vivid colours and a diverse array of mark-making, powerfully depicts her connection to Country in her distinctive visual language.
Of the award-winning painting, Hobson has stated:
“This work is inspired by feelings towards my natural world. It’s the light of the coastal morning sun shimmering across the ocean and lagoons. It’s the soft angular contours of the western slopes slowly descending to a sea of wetlands. The drama of folding and collapsing mountain ranges with the weather waiting to happen one way or the other. All the while my family and my ancestors received and gave. Mountains, plants, animals, and people.
We are all one.
We are Grounded in Nature.”
The work of all twenty-seven finalists of the 2022 Geelong Contemporary Art Prize are on view at Geelong Gallery, Victoria, until 11 September 2022.
