Hobart Art Prize. 2011

This year's exhibition would best be described as a mixed bag. There appears to be some entries that have to be questionable and others unresolved. However over all the standard is high. Most likely the reason for the unevenness in hung works is simply that the criteria of wood and paper required the material play a major role in submitted entries. By this I mean, the use of say paper , in a new or original way would take prescience over say a drawing, were it would only be a support. In this sense the requirements are somewhat different to previous years. I don't mean to imply that the content of the work was not important, simply that artists had to engage in a wider view of what is meant by wood or paper. This is an interesting development for art commitment.

The wood prize was awarded to Colin Langride's "Bulb", best described as a modified cone were the base has been finished as a half sphere, somewhat pear shaped. The work stands at a 45degree angle to perpendicular with the top ending in a suggested dangerous point. In the artist's own words, we are invited to confront an unknown form as a vision into a world full of ambiguity. Constructed of wood the form is very organic and the random painted finished suggests an old painted wall scraped down through layers of history.

The paper prize went to Megan Keating for her "Pulp & Smoke". Using a Japanese technique of stencil cutting she has arranged her cut paper pieces into interlocking pattens. The artist's intent is to draw our attention to both the organic and technical aspects of forestry. I was somewhat struck by the suggested musical presence of many of the shapes, such as trumpets, drum discs and accordions. Interpretation can be a fairly loose depending on your viewpoint. I felt the piece was somewhat decorative and the two sides of the work almost mirror images of each other despite their political and design complexity.

The other two works that caught my eye were Jan Berg's "Skin". This took the use of paper into another realm, while the skin could be a metaphor for bark. In a more traditional manner Pei Pei He Chinese scroll drawing demonstrated how much detail, movement and tone  can be achieved by the simple use of parallel lines.