Exhibition Dates: 3 November 2018 – 27 January 2019
City of Devonport National Art Award Finalists’ Exhibition will open at the Devonport Regional Gallery, at the paranaple arts centre, on Friday 2 November and continues until Sunday 27 January 2019.
The $15,000 major acquisitive award is open to artists who reside in Australia. The award is sponsored by the Devonport City Council, and the Devonport Regional Gallery Friends Committee’s Peoples’ Choice Award will be announced at the close of the exhibition and the artist will receive $1000, courtesy of One Agency Collins Real Estate.
The announcement of the winning artist will be made at the opening on Friday 2 November 2018.
Convention and Arts Centre Director Geoff Dobson said Tidal aimed to encourage contemporary practice with strength of concept, innovation and execution of two-dimensional artwork.
He said the theme was open to a range of interpretations be it personal, environmental, political or of cultural nature.
30 January 2019
Tidal.18 Public Choice Award winner announced
Former North-West Coaster Alex Davern has won the tidal.18: City of Devonport National Art Award’s People’s Choice prize for his work Night Splash, a pigment print on aluminium
Davern, who is now based in Hobart, achieved his Bachelor of Fine Arts at the University of Tasmania in 2012. In addition to being included in tidal.18 2018 also saw Davern selected for two prestigious awards – the Glover Prize and the Hadley’s Art Prize.
Devonport Regional Gallery Director Geoff Dobson said Davern’s work attracted a clear majority of votes.
“Night Splash, depicts a poolside scene at night, with the image referencing a screen shot of a film on a digital device. Some visitors wondered where we had hidden the remote and I think the strong composition and the subtle humour is what really caught people’s minds,” he said
“Alex Davern’s work will not be added to the collection as the People’s Choice is a non-acquisitive award.”
The People’s Choice Award was sponsored by One Agency Collins Real Estate.
The biennial tidal.18: City of Devonport National Art Award is sponsored by the Devonport City Council and the Friends of the Devonport Gallery and is currently valued at $15,000. The next tidal will take place in 2020.
2 November 2018
Announcement of the winner of the Art Award tidal.18
The winner of the major acquisitive prize of $15,000 for tidal.18: City of Devonport National Art Award 2018 was announced tonight (2 November 2018) at the exhibition opening at the Devonport Regional Gallery.
Artist Julia Davis, from Sydney, New South Wales, has been awarded one of Tasmania’s most prestigious prizes for her work Undercurrent, a single channel looped video with sound, where the artist employed drone technology to record tidal movements of the Tasmanian coast.
The judging was done by a panel of three judges: Adam Harding, Director, Centre for Contemporary Photography, Ashleigh Whatling, Curator Visual Art and Design, Queen Victoria Museum & Art Gallery and Dr Jan Hogan, Coordinator of Printmaking and Drawing Studios, School of Creative Arts, Hobart, UTAS.
Mr Harding said:
“We were seeking a work that illustrated a mastery of material or medium and a work that gave us an emotional response, a tidal pull to another place. Ultimately offering us, and hopefully the community of Devonport and the regions visitors a transformative experience.”
“The judges’ panel and I would like to highly commend the West Coast Tasmanian photographer Lisa Garland, for her work Arthur River Kelp, 2018. This large-scale photograph transports us to the windswept and salt encrusted coast of the Great Southern Ocean. Documenting a process that responds to the tidal nature of this community, Garland’s work illustrates there is a season to collect and a season to dry bull kelp, a process and activity that has been undertaken for generations.”
“Through this work Garland has captured the texture, grit and the physical labour involved in this process, it is as if we can smell the curing of the kelp. Through the scale of its production Garland’s photography transforms the kelp into bodily ghosts, haunting the landscape playing off this place’s isolation and beauty.”
“It is our great pleasure to award the 2018 Tidal Prize to the New South Wales artist Julia Davis, for her work Undercurrent, 2017. This single channel looped video is deceptively simple as you enter the gallery. Are we looking at a landscape or a seascape? Are we looking up or down? Pushed by the waves, pulled by the undertow the work becomes immersive. Through her control of the medium Davis has produced a monochromatic work that crosses mediums referencing the washing and staining of traditional Chinese watercolours, sweeping black lines flow from thick to thin from black to white as this works cycles through day and night, rushing in and receding, the trace of this tidal movement builds upon itself producing a stained misty mountain range.”
“Keep watching, the waves rush in and out, and then the horizon flips, we are folded into the space, we are within the waves, surrounded by the materiality of water. Produced by bringing together drone footage from the sky and a soundscape from the oceans floor, Davis uses these multiple perspectives, to disconnect us further from the real. Placing us at the centre of a timeless work of epic nature.”
The Award is sponsored by the Devonport City Council and the Devonport Regional Gallery Friends Committee. The People’s Choice Award will be announced at the close of the exhibition and the artist will receive $1000, courtesy of One Agency Collins Real Estate.
The Award, now in its seventh installment after the inaugural competition in 2004, attracted entries from all states and territories except South Australia.
The Gallery received 153 entries, one of the highest numbers of entries in the Award’s history. Of these, 46 works were preselected to be included in the Finalists’ Exhibition by the judging panel.
The Finalists’ Exhibition will continue until Sunday 27 January 2019.
Image details: 2018 Tidal Award recipient
Julia Davis, Undercurrent , (Video stills), 2017, HD Video 16:9 with stereo sound, Duration: 11 min
Camera: Tom Waugh, Edit: Blue Lucine , Sound: Julia Davis, Blue Lucine
