WAMA ART PRIZE EXHIBITION 2023

ABOUT THE WAMA ART PRIZE

The WAMA Art Prize, Works on Paper, is a $25,000 biennial national award.

Inviting a multi-disciplinary range of nature-inspired Australian artists, the award celebrates the connectivity with nature and raises awareness of the importance of conserving our precious, unique Australian environment.

Over 300 artworks were entered in the WAMA Art Prize and the 50 finalists are represented in this exhibition.

This open competition was judged by a panel of well-known members of the Victorian art industry. The panel of judges for the Award include Dr Vicki Couzens, prominent artist and Gunditjmara Keerray Woorroong women; Robert Nelson, art historian and art critic; Suzanne Davies, contemporary art gallery director; and Dr Jacqueline Healy, art historian, museum director and Chair, WAMA Art Advisory Council.

The popular People’s Choice Award is open for public vote via the online exhibition and will be announced at the end of the exhibition.

MAJOR ACQUISITIVE PRIZE WINNER

tree of life,
diary of lost souls in twenty volumes No 2

MARTIN KING

2023

etching, drypioint, polymer gravure, hard cover books
125cm h x 115cm w unframed

This work embeds naturalist John Cotton’s illustrations of birds of the Melbourne district in 1840 into an etching of a hybrid tree, an English Elm and indigenous Peppermint Gum, both present in Fitzroy Gardens Melbourne. Past and present fuse, the work is both memoriam and a vision for future eco-diversity.

AWARDS OF EXCELLENCE

Ngarta-Kiira
(To Return to Country) #1

ZENA CUMPSTON

2023

linocut collage with kopi on Fabriano paper
84cm h x 63cm w unframed

My art practice explores the interrelationships between people, plants and animals on my Barkandji Country. Through each of these works I celebrate and signpost layered knowledge. For example, the emu footprint missing one toe encodes an ingenious lesson about how to find emu eggs when you are hungry, taught to me by my Barkandji Elders.

I have included kopi, which is gypsum from our Country, processed and utilised in traditional mourning practices but also, importantly, as part of celebrations and joyous occasions. The inclusion of kopi manifests my Country and culture as physically ever-present within me. Circles embody holistic knowledge and continuation.

Through these works, I celebrate the many ways our people have kept Country and food ways strong, despite the many ongoing challenges we face as colonised peoples. I also mourn that it is still too rare that our deep knowledge and custodial responsibility as First Peoples is empowered.

Tethered

JOHANNA WEISS

2022

Mixed media, oil paints, chinagraph, silkscreen.
150cm h x 184cm w unframed

My work entails building up layer upon layer of various materials upon a substrate of heavily textured large format rag paper.

Onto this surface I begin a process of creating a foundational base by screen printing the entire area using various random screen images in my studio. I then conceal the printed surface by adhering layers of tissue paper which is then covered with layers of white paint. This layered and textured surface is reminiscent of similar elements surrounding me in the natural coastal bush environment here on the south coast of NSW, where l am surrounded by an abundance of coastal bush and banksia forests.

My work intends to reflect the layering of discarded materials in nature producing compost from decomposed leaves, layering of undergrowth in forest beds and the inexorable build up of layers of organic materials. ‘Tethered’ is a work l created in response to the Bushfires which ravaged the area over the previous four years. It describes the dark and beautiful tenacity of Nature to endure, regardless of prevailing trauma to hold itself tethered to the earth as seed, as regrowth as invaluable compost debris.

We too, us mortals, we can find solace in our natural resilience as we overcome obstacles in our lives again and again.

Yuraygir goanna II

LIZZIE HORNE

2022

Sugar lift & open bite multiplate etching
41cm h x 59cm w unframed

This is one of several lace monitors, or tree goannas, that I have encountered at Minnie Water in the Yuraygir National Park in New South Wales. My heart always beats a little faster when one of these majestic and somewhat daunting creatures lumbers out of the undergrowth. Seeing them in their own habitat I know myself to be the interloper and wish to pay respect.

I am fascinated by their extraordinary markings, the pixilated floral pyjamas that so brilliantly blend with and reflect their surroundings, welding them to this location. I am at once looking at and through them, wanting them to be both solid and transparent, strong and vulnerable, to see them as part of the landscape that both hides and flaunts them.

2023 FINALISTS