Don’t miss your opportunity to see the winners and finalists in this year’s Bayside Acquisitive Art Prize exhibition which closes this coming Sunday 21 July.
Dani McKenzie’s captivating painting Camp was named the winner of this year’s $15,000 prize in May.
The St Kilda-based artist paints from photographs she finds in op shops, markets and antique stores around the world.
“Camp is part of a larger series of work looking at vacations and trips, how we document our lives, why we take photos on holidays,” she said.
“I started by analysing my own family photos, and feeling a connection and sentimentality, even those taken before I was born.
“Now, I work from ‘found’ images of strangers and still find a connection, they can be so poignant, like the photo I found for Camp at a Paris flea market a few years ago.”
Dani’s painting was one of 700 submitted for this year’s BAAP, which continues to grow each year, attracting artists from all over Australia.
Bayside Gallery Curator and one of BAAP’s judges, Joanna Bosse, said Dani’s work was captivating with its cinematic quality and sense of unfolding narrative.
“It’s a compelling image that lingers in the mind,” she said.
“There is a combination of technical proficiency with an intriguing image – it asks a lot of questions around what is happening at the camp, drawing you in with sophisticated composition elements, and a beautiful interplay of negative and positive space.
“The mood of the work is strong and its semi blurred surface gives an impression of a passage in time, a scene unfolding. The judges found it captivating.”
The $3,000 Local Art Prize went to Fiona McMonagle for her painting Toast with jam.
Joanna said Toast with jam was instilled with a heavy nostalgia similar to a forgotten family photograph.
“McMonagle captures that self-satisfaction of the quiet pleasure of eating toast with jam,” she said.
Other judges included ³Ô¹ÏÍøÕ¾ Gallery of Victoria Contemporary Art Curator Jane Devery and Tarra Warra Museum of Art Curator Anthony Fitzpatrick.
Artist Dani McKenzie and her prize winning painting Camp
