Emerging Aboriginal & TSI Artists Sought

Early career Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists are being encouraged to enter the John Fries Memorial Prize which carries prize money of $10,000. Entries for the prize close on 6 May, 2013 and 18 finalists will be selected for the 2013 John Fries Memorial Prize Finalists’ Exhibition held at Gaffa Galleries in Sydney in August.

Copyright Agency/Viscopy Indigenous Communications Coordinator, Trish Adjei, says The prize is one of the best opportunities for emerging visual artists in Australia as entries are invited in all mediums and an artist can choose from any work they have completed in the past three years.

“Artists can submit anything from sculpture, performance, new media, photography, painting, drawing, installation, ceramic and object-based art,” Trish says.

One of last year’s finalists was Kittey Malarvie from Waringarri Arts in Kununurra, Western Australia. Her work, Looka – Cracked Mud, was exhibited in Sydney last year. It is a painting of the dried and cracked mud flats she would play in with her sisters and cousins as children.

She writes of her work: In the wet seasons and after a big tide on the Sturt River the water would rise up on the black mud flats, as it dried it would turn crystal, like salt. We would play making cakes from the dried shapes and sometimes play like stepping stones. Sometimes the old people would eat these cracked mud cakes as bush medicine for the salt. I like making paintings from my memories from when we were young and all together.

There has been strong interest in Kittey’s work recently and she feels the exposure she has had because of the 2012 John Fries Memorial Prize has definitely helped. Kittey’s work will feature in an exhibition in China this month and she intends to enter the John Fries Memorial Prize again this year.

The prize began in 2010, so artists are still learning about it. The organisers are keen to encourage more Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists to enter. Entry is free if you are a Viscopy member “and joining Viscopy is also free. Otherwise, the JFMP entry fee is $35,” Trish says.

URL: Viscopy