Bundoora Homestead Art Centre have announced the winner of the 2017 Darebin Art Prize, the biennial multi-medium award for excellence in contemporary visual art across all mediums, including painting, works on paper, photography and video works, sculpture, ceramics and craft.
As this year’s winner, Melbourne-based artist Claire Lambe receives a cash prize of $10,000 and her winning photograph, She never speaks about herself, she could be anything, will be acquired into the Darebin City Council’s permanent art collection.
Claire Lambe, She never speaks about herself, she could be anything, 2017, photograph, edition 1 of 3 + 1 AP, isolation sound absorber. Courtesy the artist and Sarah Scout Presents, Melbourne
The judging panel of the Darebin Art Prize included Professor of Art and Performance at Deakin University, David Cross; artist Lou Hubbard; and Curator of Bundoora Homestead Art Centre, Claire Watson.
David Cross, Professor of Art and Performance at Deakin University said:
‘The winning work demonstrates an extraordinary acuity, a stunning economy of image, text, materiality and concept. It evokes a quiet but sustained resonance and captures an elision of visual complexity and haptic experience. It’s haunting but not spooky. It has a clarity of purpose — that elusive quality of just enough but no more. In an exhibition of work that is so affective and complex, it somehow suspends and holds the participant in a thrall, it keeps us delicately within its unique activation of space and experience of time. It is beautifully made and situated and is in our estimation a fitting winner in a hugely competitive field.’
The judging panel also congratulated Anna Finlayson, Joshua Petherick and Matthew Greaves whose work was highly commended.
The 2017 Darebin Art Prize finalist exhibition is showing until 4 March 2018 at Bundoora Homestead Art Centre, Melbourne.
2017 finalists include: Connie Anthes, Rushdi Anwar, Belle Bassin, Zanny Begg, Jessie Bullivant, Jon Butt, Sheena Colquhoun, Georgina Cue, Jaye Early, Leslie Eastman, Anna Finlayson, Matthew Greaves, Bronwyn Hack, Will Heathcote, PJ Hickman, Timothy Hillier & Danzel Baker, Kez Hughes, Eliza Hutchison, Linda Judge, Ash Keating, Annika Koops, Claire Lambe, Bridie Lunney, Sam Martin, Hayley Millar-Baker, Adelle Mills, Archie Moore, Kent Morris, Sophie Neate, Joshua Petherick, Steven Rendall, Nicholas Selenitsch, Vivian Cooper Smith, Nicholas Smith, The Ryan Sisters, Ebony Truscott, David Wadelton, Kellie Wells, Deborah White and Alice Wormald.
