The $50,000 ‘National Self-Portrait Prize (NSPP)’ is an acquisitive biennial event with the latest iteration co-curated by Glenn Barkley and Holly Williams, co-founders of The Curators’ Department.
The duo invited 28 artists to submit their work for ‘NSPP 2017’: Davida Allen, Robert Brain, Vicky Browne, Scott Chaseling, Karla Dickens, Julie Fragar, Will French, Helen Fuller, Dale Harding, Patsy Hely, Lorraine Jenyns, Jumaadi, Heidi Lefebvre, Vincent Namatjira, Claudia Nicholson, Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran, Jenny Orchard, Jungle Phillips, Lisa Reid, Marcelle Riley, Madonna Staunton, Kenji Uranishi, Justine Varga, Carla & Lisa Wherby, Terry Williams, William Yaxley, Paul Yore and Alan Young.
“The idea of a self-portrait provides artists with a unique opportunity to question themselves, their identities, their personalities and insecurities and, for many, to construct an image of themselves that they would otherwise probably never make,’ says UQ Art Museum Director Dr Campbell Gray.
Jenny Orchard, Self Portrait as a Multispecies Activist, 2017, glazed earthenware with metal frame, feathers, wool and synthetic fibres, raffia and rubber. Courtesy the artist and Beaver Galleries, Australian Capital Territory
The award was judged by Erica Green – University of South Australia’s Anne and Gordon Samstag Museum of Art Director, and Curator of the 2018 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art.
Green said the artists had responded to the curatorial theme ‘Look at me looking at you’ with carefully considered artworks that demonstrated significant depth, which was a strength of curated, rather than open, prizes; ‘The more I looked at the works, the more it was that different qualities began to emerge, and the longer I looked, the more challenging it became to choose a winner,’ she said.
However, Green was drawn to one work in particular, ‘it’s playful, celebratory and intriguing – and revealed something new each time I returned to it’, confirms the judge.
Sydney-based artist Jenny Orchard was announced the winner of this year’s prize at the official exhibition opening on Friday 17 November.
‘It’s technically a very refined work, with detailed and subtle qualities to which the artist has given considerable thought. But Jenny’s ‘self portrait’ is also a bold imaginative leap into another world. It’s a totemic amalgam of the things that surround her life physically, and her belief in the redeeming role of ‘empathy’,’ continues Green.
Jenny Orchard with her NSPP 2017 winning work, Self Portrait as a Multispecies Activist, 2017
Orchard makes figurative hybrid ceramics, totemic forms and vessels that explore liminal states of being while celebrating the diversity of material form.
Artist’s Statement
A yearning for connection is at the heart of my ceramics and art practice. Connection with other people, but also with the world, the ecology, is the essence of my work.
Many components of the works are taken from moulds of plants, vegetables from the supermarket, tree rubbings, and debris from my garden. They are reminiscent of phytoplankton, the shapes of clouds, eyes that reflect back. I am fascinated by the idea of what the world would be for a chameleon, a fly, a mountain; these things have a life that I believe is part human. Because we experience them, our consciousness reaches out to them.
Empathy does not exist virtually, only in the consciousness of those who experience it. This is a word that has been scrawled across the front wall of my house for the past two decades; it’s a concept I feel strongly about. It’s naïve to believe empathy will save the world, but I choose to be wilfully naïve. Any of my ceramic creatures or totems could be a self-portrait, ‘this is how I am, bits of everything.’ — Jenny Orchard
UQ Art Museum
Until 18 February, 2018
Queensland
