Ramsay Art Prize 2019
$100,000 national art prize supporting contemporary Australian artists under 40.
Experience the vision and ingenuity of artists under 40 from across Australia in the second iteration of the Ramsay Art Prize. Held every two years, the Ramsay Art Prize invites submissions from Australian artists under 40 working in any medium.
Works by 23 artists have been selected as finalists and are on display in this major exhibition. The winner of the $100,000 Ramsay Art Prize 2019 is Vincent Namatjira with his work Close Contact, 2018.
The winning work of art is a double-sided portrait in acrylic paint on plywood. It represents a new way of working for Vincent Namatjira, and a departure from his wall-based paintings on canvas. The title refers to the concept of ‘first contact’ between Indigenous Australians and Captain James Cook. Namatjira uses the double-sided painting as a strategy to explore the reversal of historical narratives of colonisation. Close Contact presents an unexpected conflation of past and present, coloniser and colonised, and the British invasion/discovery of Australia.
Finalists were chosen by an international judging panel comprising Russell Storer, Deputy Director (Curatorial and Research), National Gallery of Singapore, Richard Lewer, contemporary artist, and Dr Lisa Slade, Assistant Director, Artistic Programs, Art Gallery of South Australia. Through the generosity of the James & Diana Ramsay Foundation, the winning work is acquired into the Gallery’s collection.
People’s Choice Prize Winner Announced
The winner of the $15,000 Ramsay Art Prize 2019 People's Choice Prize supported by Lipman Karas is Pierre Mukeba with his work Ride to Church.
Liam Benson
'Community participatory embroidery, Thoughts and Prayers' is an assemblage of embroidered flowers created by many hands in collaboration with Liam Benson.
Jessica Bradford
'An Image of a Tiger' calls into question how tradition and culture are transmitted, mutated or lost across time and geographic borders.
Ry David Bradley
In today’s screen-centric world, a conflation between the private and global occurs. 'CnN5D+YUNpy' considers modern screen technology and the history of mechanical looms.
Eric Bridgeman
Shields have been used in times of battle as potent symbols of power to attackers. Eric Bridgeman, however, sees this icon of warfare as a protector of untold stories and undocumented histories.
Lina Buck
'In Context (Actions Becoming)', a 2-channel video projection, considers the individual’s approach to space and the factors that shape this experience.
Dale Collier
Conceptual artist Dale Collier combines sculptural objects and digital technology to perform contemporary historical critique.
Julia deVille
Thirty-five years ago a giraffe died at the Adelaide Zoo. Its body was kept in the freezer of the Queen Victoria Museum, Launceston, until it was acquired by Julia deVille seven years ago.
Kuba Dorabialski
'Seven Revisionists' is a 22-minute, full-HD, stereo-sound video installation filmed on the centenary of Russia’s October Revolution of 1917.
Emily Ferretti
'Shifting Landscapes' is comprised of twenty-one works on paper, showcasing the artist’s exploration of landscape imaging through the process of monotype printing.
Tom Freeman
'Dippers' began five years ago as a series of small wire shapes. Each day that Tom Freeman visited his studio, he dipped the wire forms into a tub of acrylic paint.
Tarryn Gill
Tricksters presents a swarm of shape-shifting hand stitched figures that morph into self-portraits.
Nathan Hawkes
Using rudimentary mark-making with fingers and hands, masking, sponges and a vacuum cleaner, Nathan Hawkes’ triptych exemplifies his commitment to the exercise of drawing.
Sophia Hewson
In her performance piece 'Viewer as patient', artist and psychoanalysis student Sophia Hewson examines the relationship between the viewer, the artist, and the work of art.
Hayley Millar-Baker
Hayley Millar-Baker’s works draw from her grandfather’s archive, family albums and images of her own moments captured on and off Country.
Viv Miller
'Folk' is an animation that incorporates more than 200 hand-drawn pictures in pencil, gouache, text, basic computer graphics and a soundtrack.
Pierre Mukeba
Without access to art materials, Pierre Mukeba’s first drawings and paintings were made on bed sheets with indelible brush pens and pencils.
Vincent Namatjira
'Close Contact' represents a new way of working for Vincent Namatjira, and a departure from his wall-based paintings on canvas.
Phuong Ngo
'Loss in the Aftermath' combines photography and installation to explore the loss that is still felt several generations into the Vietnamese diaspora.
Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran
'Bronze Deities' channels the scale and authority of temple iconography, brutalist architecture and colonial-era public monuments to envision ‘deities in drag’ or multi-gendered ‘gods’.
Jahnne Pasco-White
Originally painted in situ onto the walls at Gertrude Contemporary, 'Being Here is Everything (What a Pity)' has been reconfigured as a five piece panel.
Huseyin Sami
Continuing his exploration of paint, Huseyin Sami investigates the properties of household paint in his studies of colour, form and materiality.
Isadora Vaughan
'Canker Sore' is made from steel, ceramic, crushed stone, glass, silicon and sand. The work was produced through months of experimentation.
Sera Waters
In 'Falling: Line by Line' Sera Waters has transformed an intimately scaled long-stitch into a seven-metre length of photographic wallpaper.