Currently logged in. Logout
Forty-three artworks have been shortlisted for the 2023 iteration of the biennial Footscray Art Prize, selected from over 500 submissions from artists across Australia and one internationally based creative by a judging panel comprising industry specialists: University of Melbourne Art Museum Associate Director Charlotte Day, Curator and artist Phuong Ngo, and National Gallery of Victoria’s First Nations Art Curator Shonae Hobson.
The works span multiple platforms and disciplines, representing a fascinating portrayal of contemporary creative practice in Australia as well as the artists who produce them.
Victoria Pham, DOMESTICUS VENUS, video, sound, and sculpture installation work. Narration by Robert Attenborough and Victoria Pham. Courtesy the artist and Footscray Art Prize 2023
Among the shortlisted works is Parisian-based artist Victoria Pham’s DOMESTICUS VENUS – a mockumentary, satirical video, and sculpture installation. Also, previous Footscray Community Arts Artist in Residence Foni Salvatore’s work Adau is a stunning oil portrait of a South Sudanese woman, and Nicholas Burridge’s sculpture Explosive Forming which is informed by the history of the Footscray Munitions Factories draws a parallel between the mark left by a bullet and the effect of manufacturing on a landscape.
Sara Kian-Judge, a Walbunja-Yuin woman and autistic artist working at the intersection of environmental and disability arts, provides insight into her shortlisted work, Autistic Animals, which is produced with white ink and watercolour pencils on black paper: “Animals help me understand my autism. When people talk about culling bats and sharks, it feels the same as when they talk about curing autistic people. So I sometimes feel more bat or shark than human. These drawings express proprioception and sensory disturbance through my relationships with bats and sharks.”
The exhibition also features digital video work from Barkindji artist Kent Morris titled Waa and Wattle, which mirrors the methodical disassembly and denial of First Peoples cultural knowledge and reflects First Nations knowledge systems surviving, regenerating, and continually evolving. And visual artist Nikki Lam has transferred 16mm film to 2K digital with sound to produce the unshakable destiny_2021.
All forty-three artworks, including 113 artworks from the young artist categories, are currently on view at Footscray Community Arts, Footscray VIC 3011, until 17 September 2023.
