Melbourne-based artist Vanessa Kelly has won the John Leslie Art Prize 2018, one of Australia’s most prestigious prizes for landscape painting.
Kelly’s enigmatic painting Wyatt Brothers Chicory Kiln, Corinella Gippsland depicts the historic kiln at Corinella near Phillip Island, built to dry the roots of the chicory plant, once used as a coffee substitute. Her luminous painting elegantly and economically conveys the melancholy of the decaying structure.
Winner of the John Leslie Art Prize 2018 – Vanessa Kelly, Wyatt Brothers Chicory Kiln, Corinella Gippsland, 2018, acrylic on linen, 90 x 120cm. Courtesy the artist and Gippsland Art Gallery, Victoria
Kelly will receive $20,000 with her work acquired by the Gippsland Art Gallery. Guest judge Dr Andrew Frost, a Sydney-based art writer, critic, and broadcaster described the work as ‘a striking painting from the point of view of composition, colour and light. The light grey against the dark grey is very effective. The use of local Gippsland subject matter is interesting.’
‘This is a uniquely Australian landscape, in that it is marked by time. In regional areas buildings don’t get suddenly erased, as they do in the city, they just slowly weather away. This painting records an instance of that.’
Frost also praised the execution of the work, noting that ‘The painting is in a realist style but it’s not overdone, it’s quite subtle. It¹s quite painterly in the way the artist has dealt with surface. There’s a balance between something impressionistic and something illustrative. The artist has found a beautiful balance between the two.’
Winner Best Gippsland Work 2018 – Andrea Sinclair, Bonfire at Yarragon South, 2017, oil on panel, 40 x 40cm. Courtesy the artist and Gippsland Art Gallery, Victoria
Yarragon-based artist, Andrea Sinclair, was awarded the $1,000 Best Gippsland Work for her painting Bonfire at Yarragon South. The small oil on panel work impressed judge Andrew Frost for its luminosity and the way the paint had been used. He said, ‘It has that sense of place but also of light. It is ineffably Australian in its treatment, and conveys a sense of regional Australia. It’s not romanticising the subject, it’s about a real place. It has a beautiful ‘you are here’ feeling that we associate intimately with the experience.’
In 2018 the Gippsland Art Gallery received a record 493 entries from all states of Australia, with the shortlist of 59 finalists going on show from 22 September to 25 November 2018.
