Perpetual, as Trustee, and the S.H. Ervin Gallery have announced seven artists as finalists for the inaugural Evelyn Chapman Art Award. This new award provides a $50,000 scholarship for an Australian painter, male or female under the age of 45, to engender the encouragement, development and rewarding of artistic skill, through furthering the training and knowledge and skills of Australian painters.
S.H. Ervin Gallery Director Jane Watters says, ‘This new award celebrates the history and future of Australian painting as it offers contemporary painters working in oil and tempera a wonderful opportunity and unrivalled freedom to develop their artistic practice and education. The award is important because it encourages the development of traditional techniques while helping to create a platform for contemporary artists to forge new paths and further the development of the medium in the future. The quality of the 2018 finalist works is testament to the vitality and experimentation present in the tradition today.’
Fabrizio Biviano, Marvin Lee Confidential I – Praying it the end of time
The 2018 Evelyn Chapman Art Award finalists are: Fabrizio Biviano (VIC), Bridget Dolan (NSW), Frances Feasy (NSW), Amanda Marburg (VIC), Kate Stevens (NSW), Lilli Stromland (NSW), Liz Stute (VIC); their paintings cover a diverse range of subject matter, from the everyday to the global featuring hyperrealist still lifes, Australian landscapes and bombings in Gaza.
Biviano’s work Marvin Lee Confidential I – Praying it the end of time is inspired by the traditions of Dutch still life painting, graphic design and his own personal experiences. Using the objects of daily life Biviano produces self-referential works that seek to examine his personal investments of time, loss and consumption.
Amanda Marburg, The little mouse, the little bird and the sausage
Marburg’s work The little mouse, the little bird and the sausage is the result of a threefold process in which she first moulds small plasticine figures and structures which are then photographed in strange worlds she builds against studio backdrops to create the final basis for her hyperrealist paintings.
Steven’s work Gaza reflects her interest in how we process images of war from the domesticity of our homes today. Steven’s recent paintings utilise stills from drone footage surveying the systematic devastation created by airstrikes in the city of Aleppo.
Kate Steven, Gaza
The winner of the inaugural Evelyn Chapman Art Award will be announced on Thursday 25 October 2018 at the S. H. Ervin Gallery in Sydney to coincide with Evelyn Chapman’s birthday, one hundred and thirty years after her birth.
Evelyn Chapman (1888-1961) was an Australian painter and the first female artist to depict the devastated battlefields, churches and towns of the western front after the First World War. A respected artist, Chapman exhibited at the Salon in France but was forced to retire as a painter following her marriage; however, she continued to espouse art education and practice. Evelyn Chapman’s archive including artworks, photographs and correspondence between her and her daughter is held at the Art Gallery of NSW National Art Archive.
