Nancy Whittaker, Tarrangower Times
The MANet upcoming IBHuman Portrait Prize exhibitions are to be held at the EDGE Gallery. The Painting, Drawing and Mixed Media finalists exhibition will be held from 5-13 February and Photography Finalists will be held from 19 – 27 February. All entries will be exhibited online for the People’s Choice Award at www.maldonartistnetwork.org.au.
To arrive at a group of finalists was no easy task. The quality and diversity of all entries was notable. In the cathedral-like cool of the Cascade Gallery, three experienced judges, all well respected practising artists in their field, undertook the onerous task of choosing the finalists for the Painting, Drawing, and Mixed Media section from a field of 118 entries. The judges worked as a team to make a blind selection of works. Blind selection means they did not know the names of the artists. They were only given the images and descriptions of the artworks. The task was to choose 40 finalists to be exhibited at Edge Galleries.
The Photography finalists were selected in a similar way by three experienced photographers who are recognised in their field.
The Exhibition Opening and announcement of Painting, Drawing and Mixed Media Judge’s Award will take place at the EDGE Galleries on Saturday 5 February 2022. The Big Reveal will be made by the judge Yvette Coppersmith, an esteemed artist who won the Archibald Prize in 2018 for her painting Self Portrait, after George Lambert. This was her fifth year of being included as a finalist and she was the tenth woman to win the Prize. The making of her 2017 Archibald portrait of Emeritus Professor Gillian Triggs features in the Foxtel Arts’ documentary film The Archibald by Mint Pictures. Yvette has been a finalist in many other high profile Prizes, including the Metro Prize, the Len Fox Painting Award, the Doug Moran National Portrait Prize and the Portia Geach Memorial Award.
The Photography Portrait Prize IBe Human will open on 19 February and run until 27 February. The Judge is Naomi Cass, who is the Executive Director of the Castlemaine Arts Museum. Naomi is a curator and writer who has worked in the fields of contemporary art, craft, design and music.
Naomi is the former Director of the Centre for Contemporary Photography in Fitzroy, Melbourne. In that position she initiated Flash, a quarterly journal of reviews, interviews and comments on Photography, published by the Centre of Contemporary Photography.
Naomi has also produced two programs of contemporary art and music for the International Music Festival, Electric Eye and The Many Faces of Percy Grainger.
Both Yvette Coppersmith and Naomi Cass will nominate the prizewinner in the Painting, Drawing and Mixed Media Exhibition and the Photography Exhibition through a blind selection.
Don’t miss out on seeing the award winners and finalists at the EDGE Galleries. Both exhibitions will be exceptional.
Also, vote for your favourite work in the exhibition of entries, which will go online on 1 March 2022 on www.maldonartistnetwork.org.au.
For further information, contact: maldonmanet@gmail.com.
This article appeared in the Tarrangower Times, 28 January 2022.