Landscapes ablaze
Glover winners focus on bushfire
BUSHFIRES inspired two winning artists in the Glover Prize exhibition.
The 2020 Glover Prize exhibition wrapped up in Evandale yesterday with the awarding of the People’s and Children’s choice awards.
NSW artist Veronica O’Leary won People’s Choice for her work Our Land is burning – Tasmanian fires 2019.
O’Leary said the painting was a response to survivingfires in her home town of Tathra in NSW, and hearing of the Tasmanian fires while working on King Island.
“I have worked on this painting to suggest the fierce intensity and devouring strength of those unprecedented fires which have destroyed precious habitat in Tasmania as well as huge tracts of land and homes in Australia, Tasmania and Kangaroo Island,” O’Leary said. “The unrelenting ferocity of these fires called for a bold hot palette and a surging energy in paint application to convey fear, powerlessness and vulnerability in the face of a force unleashed on a world in which we have ignored the implications of climate change.”
Queensland artist Laura
Patterson won Children’s Choice for 2020 Pteridomania, which depicts Russell Falls and was painted during January’s national bushfire crisis.
She was also highly commended by the judges.
“The direction of this painting changed in light of the overwhelming sadness and horror felt during the bushfires. Here, a shining example of 2020 Pteridomania, these primeval ferns sit quietly in their natural landscape, enshrined in a modern day Wardian Case, with the hopes that this jewel of natural splendour does not become overtly coveted in the future simply because it became so rare,” she said.
The winners of the People’s Choice and Children’s Choice received $3000 and $500, respectively.
The $50,000 Glover Prize was won by Hobart artist Robert O’Connor for Somewhere on the Midlands.