CQU Creates Awards Ceremony 2021
CQUniversity Australia is proud to present the CQU Creates 2021 Art Awards, once again as an online competition. We are thrilled by the standard and diversity of the work submitted this year and are pleased to celebrate the artworks with you through an online catalogue and slideshow of the beautiful artworks.
Transcript
[Sue Smith]
CQUniversity Australia is proud to present the CQU Creates 2021 Art Awards, once again as an online competition. We are thrilled by the standard and diversity of the work submitted this year and are pleased to celebrate the artworks with you through an online catalogue and slideshow of the beautiful artworks.
We congratulate and thank our exhibitors for producing such outstanding works for this competition.
[Nick Klomp]
Now in its 8th year, the annual awards celebrate the artistic talent of our students and staff, past and present.
The competition is open to entrants with a connection to CQUniversity, regardless of their experience or education in art.
The awards reflect CQUniversity’s ongoing commitment to celebrating contemporary art and artists.
As well as purchasing and displaying works by living artists across our campuses and sites, the University trains many future artists through our courses in visual arts, graphic design and multimedia.
[Sue Smith]
This year, we were excited to receive not only paintings in oil, acrylic, watercolour and pastel, photograph and prints, but also digital works, textile pieces, assemblages, wood works, glass art and jewellery.
[Nick Klomp]
We called on entrants to present works of excellence on a subject of their choice.
There was great variety in the themes selected by our artists, including portraiture and Aboriginal legend, natural and urban environments, concerns about climate change, and war and gun violence.
The artists also reflected on such topics as personal identity, play and learning, and struggles with isolation, health, gender and sexuality.
[Sue Smith]
In 2021 we received 48 entries by current and past students and staff living in Queensland, New South Wales and South Australia.
The entrants’ diverse backgrounds and interests have resulted in a compelling exhibition.
We hope that viewers will enjoy the fresh view on life in 2021 that these artists offer.
The CQU Creates Art Awards are judged each year by an independent senior artist or arts worker from the community.
This year’s judge is Rockhampton artist, Veronika Zeil. She joins us here today for our awards presentation.
Thank you for joining us Veronika for our presentation and for your expertise in adjudicating the competition.
Veronika is originally from Germany. She has lived and worked on a cattle station in central Queensland, participated in ecological field studies and has worked in graphic design and as a journalist.
Veronika has been a full-time artist since 2008 and holds a Master of Visual Art degree from Monash University and a Bachelor of Applied Science Biology from CQUniversity.
Veronika has won many awards, has been commissioned to complete many public and private artworks, and exhibits annually in public and private galleries.
[Veronika Zeil]
It is exciting and I am humbled and honoured to be asked to select the winners of this year’s CQU Creates Art Awards.
This annual art competition is a much-loved event on the arts calendar, celebrating our arts community and showcasing the contemporary artwork by past and present students and staff of the University.
Each of the 48 artists in CQU Creates 2021 is to be congratulated and celebrated for putting their work in the public realm.
The works in this exhibition are accompanied by a concept statement and all entrants responded creatively to their concepts.
Art may be self-expression and pure entertainment.
It can also influence our experience of our surroundings, and can change opinions, instil values and affect our sense of self.
It can be beautiful, emotional, constructive, inspiring and challenging.
Above all, art brings the community together, engages us in conversations, inspires social progress and furthers pride in our creative region.
[Sue Smith]
Now without further ado, let’s announce our first section of awards.
The following artists have been awarded Highly Commended. Nick, could you please open the envelope for the Highly Commended Awards.
[Nick Klomp]
This year, our judge has awarded eight highly commended awards.
I’m delighted to announce the first award goes to Rockhampton artist, Carmen Beezley-Drake for Sunset on lagoon, a linocut and watercolour on paper.
[Veronika Zeil]
This is a highly technical, intricate and mature work. Carmen is a master of this medium and creates a beautiful balanced design, rhythm and movement, while conveying the tranquillity and peace of moment and place.
[Nick Klomp]
The next Highly Commended award goes to Therese Foley for Winter in Oslo, an acrylic work on paper.
[Veronika Zeil]
This jewel like painting evokes the colours of Nordic expressionists, as well as a sense of playfulness ― mixing an “old-world” image with contemporary flair and a wintery atmosphere.
[Nick Klomp]
The next Highly Commended award goes to Elisha K Habermann, for her digital photograph, Isolation in thought.
[Veronika Zeil]
This pared back black and white photograph distils complexities of human form and psychology, amplifying a sense of sensuality, longing and loneliness.
[Nick Klomp]
Also awarded a Highly Commended is Gladstone artist Geoffrey Head for Suburban landscape, a mixed media work on paper
[Veronika Zeil]
This high impact technicolour work successfully demonstrates our dissonance with nature, through offsetting natural grassland in flamboyant colours and textures against the manmade urban straight line and geometric shapes.
[Nick Klomp]
The next Highly Commended goes to Hanbing Lu for Portrait of my friend Andy, an oil on canvas.
[Veronika Zeil]
This portrait emphasises the complexity of the character of the sitter. The viewer gets to know the sitter a little better each time you look at this animated painting.
[Nick Klomp]
The next Highly Commended goes to Ainslie McMahon for Bush walk, an acrylic work on paper.
[Veronika Zeil]
The highly expressive colour and calligraphy in this work recreates a sense of discomfort and fear of the harsh Australian bushland in a painterly and strongly individual style.
[Nick Klomp]
The next Highly Commended goes to Alana Read for her watercolour entitled Edge of the world.
[Veronika Zeil]
This evocative, immersive painting of the Australian landscape has dramatic and surreal colour contrasts, landforms and quality of light.
[Nick Klomp]
The next Highly Commended goes to Cairns artist Mili Ridge for her digital art poster entitled Blue Lights.
[Veronika Zeil]
The design for this digital art poster is striking and reflects evocatively and skilfully the retro sci fi aesthetics of the 1980s.
[Nick Klomp]
The Highly Commended award winners were all impressive; and I can’t wait to see the works and artists awarded our major prizes.
So, on that note, our next prize is the CQU Creates 2021 Current Student Award.
And the winner is Tara Windley, from Rockhampton, with her oil on canvas painting entitled Unwanted wisdom.
[Sue Smith]
Tara moved from Brisbane to Rockhampton to study oral health therapy. She has also recently switched from 3D media to painting and is passionate about overcoming the new challenges of 2D media.
This is a crisp, contemporary painting of an urban setting and moment in time – beautifully executed with subtle hints at the dichotomy of tension and intimacy between the two people in the picture
[Nick Klomp]
Our next prize is the CQU Creates 2021 Indigenous Art Award.
And the winner is a past student from Bundaberg – Llewellyn Swallow with her acrylic on canvas painting, entitled Sun woman, moon man.
[Sue Smith]
Llewellyn is a proud Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander woman of the Kabi Kabi people. Born on Mamu lands of far north Queensland, she now lives on the lands of the Taribelang Bunda of the Wide Bay region in Bundaberg. Llewellyn’s art combines traditional themes with a modern style and colours.
This work tells a Dreamtime story. When the world was young, Aboriginal people had neither light nor heat. Purukupali (the first man) and his companion Japara by chance rubbed two sticks together and made fire. Purukupali, realizing that the discovery would dispel the darkness, gave a large torch of blazing bark to his sister Wuripuranala and a smaller one to Japara. When the creation period came to an end, the mythical people were transformed into creatures, plants and natural forces. Wuripuranala became the sun woman, rising in the morning in the east with her torch. When the sun woman disappears over the western horizon, then the moon man Japara with his smaller torch journeys across the sky to overcome the darkness of the night.
[Veronika]
This work has intricate detail and patterning, and bold colour and design. It depicts a traditional Indigenous story, as well as a universal theme of the interwoven unity of opposites: day and night, summer and winter, yin and yang, male and female.
[Nick Klomp]
Now we come to our major prize.
The CQU Creates 2021 Art Award goes to Rockhampton artist Pat Connor for his colour digital photograph, The Ambassador and friends. Pat is an artist and educator at CQUniversity, living in Rockhampton.
This digital photograph includes a reflection of Pat Connor, as well as a portrait painting by Pat of the late artist Peter Indans. Peter worked as an educator for both the Capricornia Institute of TAFE and CQ TAFE. The image is reflective in nature and alludes to other paintings from art history.
[Veronika Zeil]
This is an outstanding, engaging work, as understated in its presentation as it is filled with layers of subtle symbolism and technical skill.
It reflects upon a much-analysed artwork from the Renaissance by Hans Holbein, The French Ambassadors as well as on the history of portraiture, photography, and the psychological symbolism of mirrored images in art throughout art history.
Clever referencing and juxtaposing of subjects and objects create a sense of ambiguity and reflection.
The averted gaze of the self-reflection of the artist capturing himself with camera and globe in a mirror on an easel, blends the artist and teacher into the background, pensive, independent, recording and giving access to knowledge.
In his photograph Pat reserves the spotlight for a larger-than-life artist and teacher from the past, Peter Indans, depicted in a portrait painted by Patrick. Peter was his friend and mentor who passed away years ago and is remembered by many for his art, colourful personality and devotion to teaching.
[Nick Klomp]
I’m so proud of the works awarded here today and I am in awe of the creativity of our CQUniversity community, which stretches right across the country. It truly is inspiring.
[Sue Smith]
Thank you to all those who entered this year’s competition and I encourage you to stay and view a slideshow of all 48 entries.