Melbourne-based artist Shannon Smiley has been announced as the winner of the $20,000 John Leslie Art Prize 2014’s official opening at the Gippsland Art Gallery last Friday 19 September.
The John Leslie Art Prize is one of Australia’s most prestigious non-acquisitive prizes for landscape painting. In 2014 the Gallery received a record 416 entries from all states of Australia, with the shortlist of 34 finalists.
Smiley’s painting Untitled, Burnley was selected by three judges: Tony Lloyd, artist and immediate past winner of the John Leslie Art Prize; Jane Devery, Curator of Contemporary Art, National Gallery of Victoria; and Dr Gerard Vaughan, Australian Institute of Art History and immediate past Director of the National Gallery of Victoria.
The judges agreed that Untitled, Burnley was ‘a very strong painting’, that ‘emerges more and more as you look at it’. They praised the urban setting, and felt that Smiley had produced ‘a very beautiful image out of something you wouldn’t look at twice’. The judges also commended the ‘little colour surprises’ and ‘incredible detail’, and felt that the contrast between nature and the manmade elements had been handled very well.
Smiley’s painting Untitled, Burnley depicts an overgrown patch of weeds in front of a graffiti-sprayed metal fence. The work uncovers the magic within this overlooked scene, through highly meticulous paintwork and attention to detail.
Smiley looks to the Australian suburban environment for places of enchantment. In the overlooked and undefined spaces without purpose or function, a wilderness grows with an urgent will to live. Smiley’s works are romantic depictions of contemporary landscape.
Gippsland Art Gallery
Until 23 November, 2014
Victoria
Winner John Leslie Art Prize 2014: Shannon Smiley, Untitled, Burnley, 2014, oil on canvas, 120 x 95cm
