AWAPAs Winners│Highly Commended│Entries 2020
Best Book Prize
$1,000 sponsored by Professor Terry Smith, FAHA, CIHA
Judges Associate Professor Robert Gaston and Emeritus Professor Sasha Grishin
WINNER
Geoffrey Batchen, ‘Apparitions: Photography and Dissemination’, (Sydney: Power Publications & Prague: AMU Press, 2018)
From the judges: An original, convincing and extensively researched book that may change the discipline’s understanding (in art history / photography history / critical theory / museum curating) of the complex processes involved in some of the earliest forms of commercial photography. This path-breaking study challenges photography history’s existing narrative paradigm that “privileges the singular photograph” over “the reproducible photographic image”. Batchen traces the genesis of certain early portrait daguerreotypes and their ‘transfiguration’ through engraving and lithographic printing, producing ‘ghost’ images that necessitate revaluations of both vintage photographs and their reproductions. Judiciously illustrated and with a contemporary feel, this book is constructed as a visual artefact of 2019.
HIGHLY COMMENDED
Donna Leslie, ‘Spiritual Journeying: The Art of Tim Johnson’, (Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2019)
A meticulous historical account of Tim Johnson’s art theory and practice, with particular focus on clarifying his ‘intellectual approach’ to both ‘exploring’ and representing ‘the spiritual’ throughout his career. While the artist is a major source for the author and his experiences with the visual dimensions of several religions are densely recounted, the author has sought to establish an independent critical position. The ‘accumulative’ nature of Johnson’s approach to painting has required assiduous tracing of ‘sources’ by the author. Given the broad scope of Johnson’s ‘appropriation’, the cultural sensitivities triggered by his collaborative engagement with Aboriginal, Asian and Native American artists require and are given transparent investigation and evaluation.
The design and production values are high throughout. A superbly presented study of the artist’s work.
Best Anthology Prize
$500 sponsored by the Australian Institute of Art History, University of Melbourne
Judges Dr Sheridan Palmer and Associate Professor Anthony White
WINNER
Donna West Brett and Natalya Lusty, eds., ‘Photography and Ontology: Unsettling Images’, (New York: Routledge, 2019)
As the entries for this year’s prize attest, several high-quality anthologies were published in our region during 2019. This genre of publication, which includes edited, book-length volumes containing several texts composed by different authors, has remained central to the scholarship in art history and art-related fields. This type of publication takes many forms, including collections of essays grouped around a broad topic, as well as more tightly focused studies dealing with a single group of artists or an individual.
All the authors, editors, publishers, and designers involved in the production of the texts entered for this year’s prize are to be congratulated for their efforts. Nevertheless, one of the publications stood out from the rest. In making this assessment the judges took into consideration criteria such as scholarly rigour, contribution to knowledge, impact, significance, production quality, and clarity of exposition.
The winner of this year’s anthology prize is Donna West Brett and Natalya Lusty, eds., Photography and Ontology: Unsettling Images, Routledge: New York, 2019. This fascinating and deeply researched anthology contains significant and original critiques concerning the photographic and filmic medium as evidence of social, cultural, and political states of being. Including essays by an international group of researchers, it brilliantly contributes to knowledge and debates associated with the photographic archive. The basic premise underpinning all the essays is that the meaning and definition of photography is inherently unsettled. Among the many stimulating arguments found in the book are that the medium’s epistemology of ownership – “the photograph is always tethered to a witness” (Katherine Biber) — challenges photography’s relation to the arrested historical moment. Each essay rigorously tests its argument about photography’s inherent value and brings in a range of complex issues such as displacement, democracy, truth, reality, and the imaginary. Its theoretical, philosophical, aesthetic, and ontological premises are riveting. The images reproduced in the book are targeted to each contributor’s ideas in a meaningful rather than spectacular way, and the design quality of the publication is in keeping with Routledge’s scholarly, understated style. The editors Donna West Brett and Natalya Lusty have produced an extremely important book which will have profound repercussions in debates about photography for years to come.
Best Artist-led Publication: Essay / Catalogue / Book Prize
$500 supported by Monash Art Design & Architecture, Monash University
Judges Dr Melanie Cooper and Dr Katrina Grant
WINNER
Miyarrka Media, ‘Phone & Spear: a Yuta Anthropology’, (London: The MIT Press, Distributed for Goldsmiths Press, 2019)
Phone and Spear: A Yuta Anthropology is a rich and engaging book that reveals the innovations in the use of mobile phone technology and social media platforms as a collaborative tool for an Aboriginal community in northern Australia. The book adopts what it calls a Yuta Anthropology, a term from the Yolngu language to describe the new cultural forms that emerge when novel or foreign technologies are adapted and integrated with existing values and histories. The authors propose this term also as a new approach to anthropology that aims to bring different worlds into relationship, to capture the idea of remix, of incorporating new with old, and to embrace the energy of improvisation. Too often, the ways in which the rapid uptake of mobile technology has transformed our lives over the past two decades is talked about in a global way, as though the technology itself drives our behaviour, but this book shows that there are unique stories to be told at a community and personal level. It shows that while technology does transform social interaction and creativity, at the same time individuals and communities transform technology.
The book is interspersed with dynamic punctuations of text and image in its appealing graphic design and different voices are colour-coded through the book, with each colour meaningful to its author. A language glossary offers the reader the opportunity to engage in Yolngu language, which is blended with English throughout the book. This inclusive and generous publication highlights to a broader audience the use of new technologies in Indigenous communities and alerts the reader to the growth and potential of mobile and digital mediums as a collaborative tool for making, artistic exchange and anthropological practices.
HIGHLY COMMENDED
Marni Williams (ed.), ‘Eugenia Raskopoulos: Vestiges of the Tongue’, (Sydney: Formist and Power Publications, 2019)
Also of worthy mention is Vestiges of the Tongue, a fine book on the artistic practice of Eugenia Raskopoulos, whose family cultural background and experiences of multicultural Australia informs her interest on a range of issues including the feminine body, language, translation, cultural exchange, knowledge and power. Between sumptuous colour plates of images representative of an artistic practice that prompts critical reflection and response, a collection of engaging and insightful essays by curators and academics brings a scholarly rigour to this high quality publication that is to be commended for both its aesthetic and intellectual appeal.
Best Art Writing by an Indigenous Australian
$500 prize money + new writing commission supported by Art Monthly
Judges Dr Stephen Gilchrist and Michael Fitzgerald
WINNER
Fiona Foley, ‘All men choose the path they walk: Art and the scales of justice’, Griffith Review 65 (2019) pp 97-108
In the essay All men choose the path they walk: Art and the scales of justice by Badtjala artist and academic Fiona Foley, she describes the silence and denial that is constitutive of Australian history. Furthermore, she demonstrates a steadfast commitment to outmaneuvering, outrunning and outsmarting this suffocating and indoctrinating silence. But for Indigenous people, the land is never silent. Its speaks, wails, and calls. Her practice is a testament to her own cultural responsiveness to the land and its ancestral and familial legacies. The essay details how her work in and outside of institutions has given tangible form to that which the land has seen, known and suffered. It connects colonial evidence with artistic metaphor and gives a voice to those whom history has hunted and silenced.
Best Art Writing by a New Zealand Māori or Pasifika
$500 sponsored by Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū
Judges Associate Professor Ngarino Ellis and Gina Matchitt
Ane Tonga, ‘Edith Amituanai: Double Take’, Edith Amituanai: Double Take, (Wellington: Adam Art Gallery Te Pātaka Toi, 2019) pp. 6-30
Ane Tonga’s essay in the catalogue for Edith Amituanai’s 2019 exhibition Double Take confirms the writer’s role as one of the most exciting and incisive writers active in Aotearoa today. One of the major strengths in the essay is the framing of Amituanai’s work in relation to important Samoan cultural concepts; these ‘coded signs’ are described in relation to different works, giving insight for the non-Samoan or non-Pacific reader into these worlds. Ane’s confident knowledge of European Art History and contemporary art writing (she has just completed an MA in the discipline) is played throughout, placing Edith’s works within a wider global art world. Ane has shaped her essay into nine sections tracked chronologically, bringing the reader easily through the shifts in focus across Edith’s work, from West Auckland, to France and Italy, to Alaska, and then home again to West Auckland. We looking forward to reading more from this writer.
Best Scholarly Article in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Art
$500 sponsored by the Power Institute, University of Sydney
Judges Professor Rex Butler and Dr Louise Rollman
WINNER
Helen McDonald, ‘In the Landscape of Extinction: the Life of Murujuga’s Ancient Rock Art’, ANZJA 19:2, (2019) pp. 236-252
We know that the judges say this every year, but it really is true: the standard of the essays in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Art is uniformly high and it is very hard to single out one essay to award the prize to. Many of the essays in volume 19 are likely to become classics in their field and are sure to form the basis for further work by scholars in the future.
Before coming to our winner, we would like briefly to mention a number of other contributions that we thought were outstanding or otherwise worthy of attention. First of all, there was Stefan Popescu and Aleksandr Andreas Wansbrough’s ‘Cooking with Huck Botko: Abjection, the Self and Media Categories’ (in 19:1), an expertly argued treatment of contemporary social media and its undermining of all existing human values. Then there was Sarah Scott’s ‘“A New Kind of Film”: Performing Aboriginality in James Cant’s Wirritt Wirritt (1957)’ (in 19:2), a nuanced and delicately balanced treatment of Australian artist James Cant’s imitation Aboriginal rock paintings produced for a short experimental film. Finally, we would like to mention younger-generation scholar Michaela Bear’s essay on prominent New Zealand artist Lisa Reihana, ‘Infecting Venus: Gazing at Pacific History Through Lisa Reihana’s Multi-Perspectival Lens’ (in 19:1), perhaps as a preliminary to saying that we wish there had been more contributions by Aotearoa New Zealand scholars themselves.
As for our winner, it is Helen McDonald and her essay ‘In the Landscape of Extinction: The Life of Murujuga’s Ancient Rock Art’ (in 19:2), which takes up artist Craig Walsh’s work Embedded (2013), commissioned by the Rio Tinto mining company and made in collaboration with the Yaburara people of Murujuga on the Burrup Peninsula of Western Australia, to ask a series of difficult questions about the “structural genocide” still occurring in contemporary Australia and the meaning and possibility of legislated “cultural heritage” in those mining sites occupied by Indigenous Australians (but a mining that apparently is necessary to the prosperity of Australia). It is a meticulously argued and pressingly relevant piece of work, which is everything art history in this region should aspire to. We congratulate McDonald for writing it and hope that this small and more than deserved recognition will encourage more people to read it. It is at once a timeless and an extremely timely piece of work and we thank the Journal for publishing it and making it available to us.
Best University Art Museum Exhibition Catalogue
$500 sponsored by University Art Museums Australia
Judges Dr Martyn Jolly and Professor Chris McAuliffe
WINNER
Hannah Mathews and Shelley McSpedden (eds.), ‘Shapes of Knowledge’, (Melbourne: Monash University Museum of Art and Perimeter Editions, 2019)
We found all entrants to be of excellent quality and a credit to their institutions. We noted that there was a wide range of scale and scope to the publications submitted. For instance, the winner and the highly commended entries were large and were co-productions with publishers, in one case an international publisher. This gave them more scope with budgets, and a role beyond that of individual exhibition support. Others were more ‘in house’, modestly scaled and tightly focussed, but they still did their jobs extremely well of promoting a critical understanding of their exhibitions and the artists in them. We took these structural differences into account when making our decision.
We were pleased that all entries were obviously very thoughtful about their design and clearly spent a lot of time integrating the design with the meaning and intention of the catalogue text. They were all very different to each other, but all for their own reasons. All had made clear, purposeful and sensitive decisions around design, voice, materiality and the relationship of the publication to the artists’ practices. We were pleased that so many entries confidently took an international approach to the critical analysis of their exhibitions. We were also pleased that different styles of writing were used, from the conventionally academic, to the essayistic, to the conversational. This gave an approachable texture to the catalogues, and by and large they were orchestrated to maintain a critical rigour.
We thought the winner was an excellent exhibition catalogue, particularly for an art museum at a university. The address to knowledge formation was central to the university and was framed for challenge and innovation rather than reassurance. We would like to recognise the way the collaboration between museum and publisher made design integral to the content. The publication as a whole embodies a particular way of working which has been very topical in art practice recently. In keeping with its university context, it had the feeling of a ‘colloquium’, which gives it on ongoing usefulness as a research resource. As one judge noted, ”you can imagine a well-thumbed copy with yellow post it notes sticking out of it”. Although it had a strong design aesthetic it was easy to navigate and to use, and the separate sections were well framed. And although it was a “collective arts laboratory” it still gave the reader a sense of the practices of the individual artists.
HIGHLY COMMENDED
John C. Welchman (ed.), ‘On the Last Afternoon: Disrupted Ecologies and the Work of Joyce Campbell’, (Wellington: Adam Art Gallery Te Pātaka Toi and Sternberg Press, 2019)
This is a major publishing achievement. Production qualities are excellent, and the reproductions are generous, giving the reader a sense of the illusive materiality of the works. It gives the reader a ‘deep dive’ into Joyce Campbell’s practice on many levels, from the personal, to the philosophical, to the historical. For a reader seeking to understand her work, the publication will provide a definitive critical resource, confidently mounted on a broad international scale with international voices who are each absolute leaders in their respective fields. Each essay made critical and provocative interventions on ‘picturing’ within photography, linking these to national ideologies, community traditions, knowledge formation, materiality, imagination and environment. The complementarity between these and Campbell’s practice was consistently sensitive and fruitful.
Best Large Exhibition Catalogue
$500 sponsored by the Australian Institute of Art History, University of Melbourne
Judges Dr Wendy Garden and Sarah Pirrie
WINNER
Felicity Milburn, Lara Strongman and Julia Waite, ‘Louise Henderson: From Life’, (Auckland: Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki & Christchurch: Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū, 2019)
The standard of publications in the Best Large Exhibition Catalogue was outstanding this year and demonstrated the diverse range of exhibition projects undertaken by galleries and museums in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand. However the publication that stood out for its scholarship, writing and indepth treatment was Louise Henderson: From Life, a partnership between Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki and Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū.
Emerging as a leading modernist painter in New Zealand during the 1950s, Henderson moved between Paris, Christchurch, Wellington, Auckland and the Middle East forging an independent path as an abstract painter. The publication comprises a series of compelling essays that track Henderson’s artistic journey over a seven decade period, underpinned by extensive research into primary source material. The essay by Lara Strongman is a well written account that brings the artist to life and offers perceptive insights into her practice and “lifelong intrigue” with the geometries of form and space to give visual shape to the environment around her.
Focus essays by Linda Tyler, Julia Waite, Maria Llüisa Faxedas and Felicity Milburn spotlight Henderson’s background as a textile designer and teacher while situating her approach to abstraction within the artistic milieu of her time, both in her adopted country and Europe. A candid essay by Christina Barton reveals some of the early prejudices that contributed to Henderson being overlooked in recent decades, while personal recollections by writer CK Stead provide further insights into both the artist and past prejudices that kept Henderson in the shadows and sidelined from the dominant narratives of New Zealand art history. The artist’s voice is featured throughout in excerpts from correspondence, interviews, diaries, journals and notebooks contributing to a rich understanding of the artist’s drive and motivation.
Beautifully presented and richly illustrated, the publication provides a well overdue assessment of a leading mid-century woman artist.
HIGHLY COMMENDED
Maggie Finch, et al, ‘Darren Sylvester: carve a future, devour everything, become something’, (Melbourne: National Gallery of Victoria, 2019)
When producing a publication for an artist such as Darren Sylvester’s practice which Daniel Palmer describes as “pop existentialism” combined with “individualised intimacies of a neoliberal capitalism”, it is not surprising that the catalogue comes as Twin Peaks would say, “Wrapped in Plastic”. This catalogue is a favourite from the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) 2019 productions. It is clear the publication team worked closely with Sylvester in design and content with high gloss images juxtaposed with matt titlepages and song themes & verses (Love: ‘Bugaboo, Mortality: That’s a nice haircut’, ‘Brand: Hurts to Say’, etc.) In addition, smaller inserts of Artist Notes are interspersed throughout the publication and offer useful specific insights.
The novelty of reading with iPad on You-Tube; moving from book to pop-clip sometimes simultaneously, emphasised the artist’s contemporary concern with and for time and materiality, performative fiction and directorial roles. Outstanding design features include matt paper with colour combinations of medium dark shade of blue (hexadecimal colour code #2b3b88) with ‘redacted highlight’ in a medium light shade of red (hexadecimal colour code #f0736d). This tinted red looks positively florescent against tonal blue and makes for a striking essay title-page divider.
Essays written by a diverse cohort from film critic, music journalist, photographer, curator, designer, publisher, academic and ARI Director ensure the breadth and depth of Sylvester’s contemporary practice is recognised. Special mention to engaging and insightful essays by Anthony Carew (Carew also worked with Sylvester to create the script for Me, 2013), Curator of Contemporary Australian Art at AGNSW, Isobel Parker Philip and designers, publisher, and academic Brad Haylock.
Best Medium Exhibition Catalogue
$500 sponsored by the Australian Institute of Art History, University of Melbourne
Judges Dr Joanna Barrkman, Dr Sarah Scott and Dr Wendy Garden
WINNER
Jane Eckett and Harriet Edquist, ‘Melbourne Modern: European Art & Design at RMIT Since 1945’, (Melbourne: RMIT Gallery, 2019)
Melbourne Modern is an edited volume of essays which extends existing research by adding original and new research to the topic of Australian mid-century arts practice and arts education. The contributing essays are noteworthy for their diversity and breadth as they examine various aspects of art and design practice, specifically in Melbourne in the mid-twentieth century. Melbourne Modern contributes to knowledge by advancing the intersection between arts education and the historical development of Australian art and design. It highlights the influence of European-trained émigré artists and arts educators in Australia in the mid-twentieth century in the area of visual art education and their wider contribution to the development of architecture, printmaking metal-smithing, industrial design, painting and sculpture in Australia in the mid-twentieth century.
The significance of the topic to the field and to adjacent disciplines is due to the highly interdisciplinary approach taken in the compilation of Melbourne Modern as it reaches across various cohorts of artists and disciplines within the fields of art and design.
Melbourne Modern stimulates debate about the extent and nature of European influence on Australian visual art and design. It enables an enhanced appreciation of a continuum of development in the Australian art and design sector in the mid-twentieth century, and thus builds our knowledge of the larger trajectory of how Australian art and design has evolved. It is an especially significant contribution to knowledge because it documents the history of visual arts education in Melbourne – a timely endeavour in an era when arts education is under increased threat of dissolution in the Australian academy. Critical historical analysis of art education is central to appreciating the emergence of specific cohorts of artists, arts movements and practices in an historical context.
The quality of the design and production values of the publication are exemplary. Melbourne Modern successfully conveys complex ideas to wider audiences in an accessible and considered manner. It is also noteworthy for the variety of established and emerging scholars who contributed to the publication.
HIGHLY COMMENDED
Vanessa Finney, ‘Capturing Nature: Early Scientific Photography at the Australian Museum 1857–1893’, (Sydney: Newsouth Publishing, 2019)
This book is extremely well researched and written by a single author utilising the archives at the Australian Museum. It positions the photographic record of scientific specimens as a tool for communicating new knowledge to the world. The text interrogates whether museum photography, for the purpose of documentation, can also be considered as a form of art practice. Thus it challenges accepted notions of what constitutes photography as art.
Discussing the role of photography and its impact on the development of Australian museums from as early as 1860, the publication considers photography’s role as a means of ensuring research, collection management, and most importantly, reproductions of objects as a tool of communication. It examines photography and its inherent, but often unintended, record of context, process and methodologies used thus revealing what was possibly an untended layer of history, process and context. It profiles the contribution of individual photographers and their approaches and methods for the development of photography of specimens.
The publication contains ground breaking research in relation to the intersection between photography and science as well as documenting a seminal period in natural science museums and collections development in the mid to late 1880s.
A polished design that features the photographic record of the Australian Museum, with a strong layout and design that gives emphasis to the photographs reproduced. Use of colour variation of the font enables the reader to navigate between text and specific vignettes and we particularly liked the choice of cover images (front and back) and the title pages.
Best Small Exhibition Catalogue
$500 sponsored by the University of Melbourne
Judges Dr Karen Hall and Dr Toni Ross
WINNER
Sally Quin, ‘Cosmopolitan: Art from the 1930s in the University of Western Australia Art Collection and the Cruthers Collection of Women’s Art’, (Perth: Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery, 2019)
By far the glossiest publication of the submissions with many high-quality reproductions of artworks discussed in the catalogue essay and some images that would be less familiar to those interested in 1930s Australian modernism. The catalogue engages with the perennial questions about Australian modernism from a distinctly local perspective. The interweaving of information about artists and discussion of artworks (mostly by women) is elegantly done and the writing and image selection from the two collections back up the ‘cosmopolitan’ thematic. Additionally, the section on progressive art circles and women practitioners in 1930s and early 1940s Perth adds to a little investigated area of 20th century Australian art history. Although this is a fairly traditional art historical catalogue, the combination of lavish image reproductions complemented by a solidly researched and informative essay make it a useful resource for future research.
HIGHLY COMMENDED
Jacqueline Chlanda, Bonita Ely and Angela Goddard, ‘Bonita Ely: Future Tense’, (Brisbane: Griffith University Art Museum, 2019)
The catalogue testifies to Ely’s addressal of environmental issues over many decades, making a strong case for not only the timeliness of Ely’s work in the urgency of the Anthropocene but also contextualising her practice as a significant Australian contemporary artist over fifty decades. The catalogue covers quite a lot of ground including numerous illustrations of works discussed in the well-researched essay by Angela Goddard; an example of Ely’s quite compelling writing and an interview with the artist by Jacqueline Chlanda. The documentation of the installed work was well photographed with multiple angles giving a good sense of the space and highlighting telling details.
AWAPAs Entries 2020
About the Publication Entries
All men choose the path they walk: Art and the scales of justice
Apparitions: Photography and Dissemination
Capturing Nature: Early Scientific Photography at the Australian Museum 1857–1893
Darren Sylvester: carve a future, devour everything, become something
Edith Amituanai: A Double Take
Eugenia Raskopoulos: Vestiges of the Tongue
Melbourne Modern: European Art & Design at RMIT Since 1945
On the Last Afternoon: Disrupted Ecologies and the Work of Joyce Campbell
Phone & Spear: a Yuta Anthropology
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