Art competition a winner for all
THEMED exhibitions, regional arts forums, and sponsored art competitions are just a few avenues that offer a voice to the artist.
Art, the creative visual expression of ideas, alliances, concerns, and opinions, is a powerful vehicle that encourages awareness, acceptance, and motivation that can lead to positive change.
The University of Southern Queensland’s art museum is hosting the inaugural First Nations Art Competition exhibition sponsored by Southern Queensland Landscapes.
The theme, Heal Country, fits well with the company’s commitment to natural resource management in rural and regional communities.
This includes the belief that First Nation peoples hold the key to bringing balance back into the landscape thus providing constructive pathways to a sustainable future.
The artworks are colourful, poignant, and personal.
The heartfelt cry in 11-yearold Abygail Burnbell-Smith’s I Want the World to Heal, and the traditional patterns referenced in works by Lane Brookes, Shirley Delaney, Jarryd Lawton, and Isabel Natividad are fine counterpoints to the bold symbolism in the works by Tareque Chapman and Melinda Luscombe.
The narrative paintings by Andrew Nelson are moving comments on life before and after colonisation.
Peta Richardson’s Lifeblood links ceremony and song, while her Storm over the Downs, with its haunting presence of ancestors, is a message of hope and resilience.
The grand prize was won by Melinda Luscombe with other significant awards going to Andrew Nelson, Tareque Chapman, and Isabel Natividad.
The Rosalie Gallery at Goombungee is featuring the exhibition Response to the Bunyas, a series of works emanating from the Arts on Top: Regional Arts Forum held at the Bunya Mountains last year.
It is being toured by the Western Downs Regional Council.
The show has visual impact and documents some 25 artists’ individual engagement with Indigenous history, the forest, wildlife, and vast night skies.
However, the presentation is misleading and confusing.
On the informative, didactic labels, works are described as watercolour, acrylic on canvas, fused glass, mixed media, and textiles when in reality the viewer is confronted by facsimiles: photographs of the works that have been printed onto silk.
While the cost of freighting artworks can be prohibitive, the printed silk, so removed from the original, simply does not communicate painterly surfaces, clarity of colour, or the texture of fibre works.
The boldly printed artists’ names are also a distraction that commercialises artistic integrity.
It is frustrating that there is no statement of intention detailing the decision to reproduce what appear to have been robust tactile responses to memorable experiences.
Some works are displayed in light boxes, an interesting concept but one that washes out colour and detail, an exception being Ken Chapman’s photograph of fungi.
The astrophotography slide show by Donna Glass also captures the wonder of location.
While the three-dimensional components, though arresting, are not strong enough to carry the show.