Ian Hay wins the Rick Amor Drawing Award 2024

Ian Hay’s . . . and somewhere else tomorrow, 2023, has won the Rick Amor Drawing Award 2024. The ink on paper work will become part of the McClelland Collection.

This year’s judge, Australian artist Nick Mourtzakis, said the winning work “is a drawing that compresses and measures its forms in quanta of square millimetres with a beautiful precision. The work is fraught with speculative and possible resolutions and seems to develop in an entirely improvised way toward an inevitable conclusion; it’s a fascinating work.

“While representing diverse and varied approaches, the singular qualities that mark the drawings in the whole exhibition, are the motivation and humane conviction to evoke significant meanings and confirm the life of the emotions,” says Mourtzakis. He adds, “Drawing has its beginnings in prehistory and is in effect a powerful and natural antidote to the more delusional aspects of contemporary technology and culture.”

Ian Hay, . . . and somewhere else tomorrow, 2023, ink on paper, 12 × 8cm. Courtesy the artist and McClelland, Victoria

The 2024 Rick Amor Drawing Award finalists are: Kylie Blackley, Moira Burke, Carmel Byrne, Philip Cooper, Matthew Clarke, W.H.Chong, Yvonne East, Linda Fardoe, Vivien Gaston, Harry Hay, Ian Hay, Barbie Kjar, James Money, Susan Morse, Adam Nudelman, Catherine O’Donnell, Massimo Palombo, Ignacio Rojas, Claire Sheperd, Mary Tonkin, Caroline Walls, Michelle Zuccolo.

McClelland Artistic and Executive Director, Lisa Byrne said, “The finalists’ works demonstrate a strong diversity of approaches to drawing, from fluid, to controlled drawing practice, to disciplined and some freer suggestive ways of drawing, across a range of still life, abstract and conceptual.

“Drawing has been traditionally used as a preparatory activity in sketching and studies ahead of finished paintings or sculptures. This Award demonstrates the vibrancy of drawing practice as exciting media in its own right, full of invention and experimentation.”

In conceiving the Award, artist Rick Amor said he wants to promote the practice of drawing in contemporary Australian art, noting that “this prize gives people one more reason to keep drawing on paper . . . the most direct and intimate expression of an artist’s sensibility.”

The exhibition of finalists’ works is on view at McClelland, Langwarrin VIC 3910, until 21 July 2024.

mcclelland.org.au

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