On Thursday 10 March at Juniper Hall Paddington, the 2022 winners of the Tom Bass Prize for Figurative Sculpture were announced by Sydney Contemporary Director Barry Keldoulis.
There were four Prizes on offer worth $26,000. The $18,000 Tom Bass Prize, the $5,000 Highly Commended Prize, the $2,000 Youth Prize and $1,000 Crawford’s Casting People’s Choice Prize (which will be announced at the close of the exhibition).
Jess MacNeil, Threshold, acrylic sheet and oil paint, 25.5 x 23 x 29cm
The Tom Bass Prize ($18,000) was jointly awarded this year! $9,000 was awarded to each artist. The winning artists were New South Wales artist Jess MacNeil with her sculpture – Threshold. Suspended at the irrevocable point where gravity takes hold after impact, the figure in Threshold is held in a liminal space of creation and disintegration. Splintered, volatile, evasive, pervasive; the figure continuously emerges and dissolves in an ongoing process of constructive destruction. Threshold embodies the intense fragility and immense power and vigour of life force.
And the other joint winner was Victorian artist Maudie Brady with her sculpture – Muninn’s Fate. In the Old Norse mythology of Odin, the messenger ravens Huginn and Muninn respectively mean ‘Thought’ and ‘Mind’. This work is about the inner struggle often created by these aspects of ourselves.
The Highly Commended Prize ($5,000) was awarded to Victorian artist Fiona J Schoer with her sculpture Finding Comfort in the Body. And the Curator’s Choice Prize went to New South Wales artist Stevie Fieldsend with her sculpture Song
of Songs.
Fiona J Schoer, Finding Comfort in the Body, timber door, metal springs, calico, timber chair arms, wax, oil paint, metal fixings, 97 x 54 x 35cm
The 2022 Finalists’ Exhibition is a showcase of representational, abstract, innovative and contemporary works inspired by the human form, at Juniper Hall, Paddington, Sydney from 11 to 27 March 2022.
This year’s Prize was judged by three prominent figures of the Australian art industry: art advisor and gallerist Sally
Dan-Cuthbert, artist Lea Ferris and Sydney Contemporary Director Barry Keldoulis. The exhibition is curated by Wendy Black.
