Lori Pensini wins the 2024 Portia Geach Memorial Award

Congratulations to Lori Pensini, winner of this year’s $30,000 Portia Geach Memorial Award, the pre-eminent portraiture prize for women in Australia, presented annually for the best portrait painted from life of a man or woman distinguished in art, letters or the sciences.

On her winning portrait, titled The conversation #3, Pensini writes: “This work is continuum of a series I’m exploring around conversations with animals and understanding animal decision making for conservation. It draws from memories and encounters with our unique wildlife and my biophylic nature to connect with nature and other forms of life.

Animals make decisions based on their environmental and social context. The rate at which we are altering the natural systems through the impact of habitat loss and degradation has set about critical changes in that context that ultimately impacts species populations and diversity. Such decline in biodiversity threatens our basically ecological cycles and has a direct impact on our own health. The conversation #3 opens up dialogue around our engagement with animals, the differences in the way we perceive and experience the same world and how we can balance the different realities to redevelop more sustainable models moving forward.”

Lori Pensini, The conversation #3

Lori Pensini, The conversation #3 (self-portrait), oil on raw linen, 52 × 80cm

The judging panel comprising Denise Mimmocchi, Senior Curator at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Katherine Roberts, Senior Curator at Manly Art Gallery and Museum, and Jane Watters, Director, S.H. Ervin Gallery, commented: “Lori Pensini’s work The conversation #3 is a beautifully composed painting that delivers, with exceptional skill, an alluring sense of connection between human and animal subjects. The painting sensitively conveys the artist’s desire to explore knowledge systems of the non-human world, suggesting how these might influence an understanding our environments as cohabited spaces. The intimacy of this shared portrait may reflect the artist’s own experience, but also poses a timely and larger question of how we view the world at a time of human-made environmental crisis.”

Highly commended:
Deirdre Bean, Rembrandt and Trevor (I can hear you) (Dr Trevor Weekes, artist), oil on linen, 61 × 82cm
Liz Stute, Melbourne’s old rattler (self-portrait), oil on canvas, 102 × 76cm

The exhibition of fifty-eight finalists’ works is open for public viewing at the S.H. Ervin Gallery, Millers Point NSW 2000, from 25 October to 15 December 2024.

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