The Art Gallery of New South Wales announced today that Sydney-based video, performance and installation artist, Angelica Mesiti, has won the $25,000 acquisitive Anne Landa Award for video and new media arts for her video work ‘Citizens Band’.
This year’s award was selected by Michael Brand, Director of the Art Gallery of NSW and Wayne Tunnicliffe, Head of Australian Art, in consultation with the exhibition curator Charlotte Day.
Michael Brand said: ‘Angelica Mesiti’s ‘Citizens Band’ is a highly resolved, moving and elegiac work in which the artist has filmed four people who all make music as part of their daily lives. While they no longer live in their home countries – Cameroon, Mongolia, Sudan and Algeria – all are evoked through their highly personal performances which are modest and yet resonant with cultural experiences acquired earlier in their lives’.
Charlotte Day comments: ‘Angelica’s work ‘Citizens Band’ conveys the power of performance as a form of expression and way of connecting people. The work is poignant without being sentimental, reflecting on the knowledge and experiences that we carry with us’.
The Anne Landa Award was the first acquisitive award in Australia to focus on moving image and practices and the application of new technologies to contemporary art. Established in 2004, in honour of Anne Landa, a former trustee of the gallery who embraced challenging art and ideas, the award is a vital platform for presenting and supporting dynamic, exploratory work that is exemplary in this area.
This year’s exhibition The space between us is on display at the Art Gallery of NSW until 28 July 2013 and considers the interrelation of video and performance. Guest-curated by Charlotte Day, Director, Monash University Museum of Art, the exhibition features the work of artists Lauren Brincat, Alicia Frankovich, Laresa Kosloff, Angelica Mesiti, Kate Mitchell, James Newitt and Christian Thompson.
The space between us
Art Gallery of New South Wales
Until 28 July, 2013
Sydney
Image: Angelica Mesiti Citizens Band(production still),2012, four-channel high definition video installation 16:9, colour, sound 21:25 min © the artist and Anna Schwartz Gallery
