Congratulations to the winners and highly commended of the AWAPAs for 2023
BEST BOOK
From an exceptionally strong field of scholarly art historical book publishing, the judges decided to award the prize to:
WINNER:
Penelope Jackson, The art of copying art. (Cham Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2022)
Copying art for purposes of training or replicating artwork for collections, filmsets or as forgeries is an ancient practice. Jackson, with wit, scholarship and investigative brilliance, brings together the different traditions of copying art in this engaging and very readable volume. This is an original and pioneering piece of research that opens a field where many scholars have trespassed but none, till now, have settled and fully investigated.
HIGHLY COMMENDED:
Elly Kent, Artists and the People: Ideologies of art in Indonesia. (Singapore: National University of Singapore, 2022)
and
Roger Benjamin: Growing up modern: Canberra’s Round House and Alex Jelinek. (Sydney: Halstead Press, 2022)
Judges: Emeritus Professor Sasha Grishin and Dr Caroline Jordan
BEST ANTHOLOGY
The judges commend the efforts of all those involved in publishing the wide range of research in the anthologies presented for consideration in the category Best Anthology Prize.
WINNER:
David Homewood and Paris Lettau, (eds.), Ends of Painting: Art in the 1960s and 1970s. (Sydney: Power Publications, 2022.)
The premise of this book is that artists from the 1960s and ‘70s, far from simply/simplistically rejecting painting as an exhausted or bourgeois medium, reappraised it within an expanded network of media in order to explore ‘novelties through and in relation to painting’. The introduction by David Homewood and Paris Lettau is persuasively argued and clearly written. Whether comprising specific case studies or reconfiguring familiar art historiographies of the period, the essays are generally rigorously argued with many fresh insights to inform and delight the reader. The 12 contributors give a good global coverage, though mostly oriented to Australia, Europe and the USA.
The book is pitched at art historians interested in the radical reappraisals of art by artists given the geo-political upheavals of the time, challenges to the prevailing Euro-American hegemony of the art scene, the embrace of new media, trans-national opportunities and, within Australia, the emergence of cross-cultural currents that witnessed the supercharging of painting by performance and conceptual art. The strongest essays are thoughtful, erudite, original and inspiring. Most art historians will delight in finding something new in the anthology, but there is also much to engage readers with an interest in a broader fields of societal and visual studies.
The design and production values are excellent which contributes to the appeal of the book. Inserts of a generous number of colour illustrations are welcome.
Judges: Associate Professor Catherine De Lorenzo & Professor Helen Ennis
BEST ARTIST-LED PUBLICATION
The judges congratulate all entrants on the high overall standard of their publications and texts. It was an impressive and diverse collection of artist-led publications, presenting us with the daunting task of selecting an overall winner from many worthy submissions.
WINNER:
Natalie King (ed.) Paradise Camp by Yuki Kihara. (Thames and Hudson, 2022)
This lush catalogue for New Zealand’s pavilion at the 2022 Venice Biennale not only showcases the work of an important contemporary artist, it is also an impressive work of scholarship that provides a rich and fascinating context for Kihara’s photographic practice. Kihara’s work Paradise Camp was inspired by the essay by Māori scholar Dr Ngahuia te Awekotuku, ‘He tangi mo Ha’apuani: Gaugiuin’s models – a Māori perspective’, which also inspires the organisation of the book. Diverse authors, including Kihara herself, provide insightful reflections on Samoa’s colonialist and Fa’afafine history, revisiting and repurposing the work and legacy of Gauguin and broader Pacific colonialist contexts, and are importantly contextualised within cultural, community and gender identity. The result is a publication that is not only gorgeous but also timely, educational and thought provoking.
HIGHLY COMMENDED:
Simryn Gill, Tom Melick and Catherine de Zegher (eds.), Simryn Gill: Clearing. (Sydney: Art Gallery of New South Wales, 2022)
A publication produced as an adjunct to Gill’s installation Clearing at AGNSW, this book uses its form to tease out multiple visual and textual narratives of tree-being as the material/spiritual muse of the artworks and their presentation. The folio that comprises the main body of the book is unbound, using the fold to sequence and potentially reorganise the content: prints from Gill’s tree rubbings forming the recto; personal and archival photographs of the historical and contemporary social-industrial environment within which the work is made, and Gill’s own writing on the process of the work form the verso. The essay by Catherine de Zegher draws from a range of historical and contemporary thinking as a way of elucidating Gill’s process. Together these texts tease out a careful and sustained art-led research that compels us as readers through the book. The production values continue the black and white reproductions and the soft tactility that Gill and Melick prioritise in their work as Stolen Press. Clearing is given a Highly Commended because it is exemplary of both art-led research and art-led book production.
and
Chrischona Schmidt (ed.), Ikuntji Textiles. (Haasts Bluff/Ikuntji: Ikuntji Artists, 2022)
While this publication may not strictly tick all the boxes of the judging criteria, we felt it deserved to be given a Highly Commended for its championing of alternative ontologies and forms of scholarship that sit outside Western academic models. Ikuntji Textiles is a beautiful, celebratory publication and an impressive feat of self-publication by a remote Aboriginal art centre operating on a shoestring budget. Scholarship resides in oral storytelling and knowledge inheritance and dissemination by community elders, with the Luritja artists telling their own stories in their own words and—significantly—in language. The book also promotes the idea of art and artists as being embedded in, and integral to, one’s everyday life and surroundings.
Judges: Dr Jazmina Cininas and Dr Fiona Macdonald
BEST ART WRITING BY AN INDIGENOUS AUSTRALIAN
WINNER:
Stephen Gilchrist, ‘The Aftermath: Visualising Genocide’ in Yve Chavez and Nancy Marie Mithlo (eds.), Visualising Genocide: Indigenous Interventions in Art, Archives and Museums. (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2022)
A strong and persuasively reasoned account, told through three artworks in national collections, that pick at the wounds of history, and the necessity of doing so until the wounds are healed. A profound piece of scholarly writing.
HIGHLY COMMENDED:
Paola Balla, ‘Ghost Weaving Unconditional Love into Our Futures: Collective Movements of Sovereign Art’ in Kate ten Buuren and Maya Hodge (eds.), Collective Movements: First Nations Collectives, Collaborations and Creative Practices from across Victoria. (Melbourne: Monash University Publishing, 2022)
Balla’s single-authored text stood out with its impactful clarity and coherence of its conceptual theme – Ghost Weaving as a form of matrilineal artistic inheritance.
and
Erin Vink, ‘The recontextualisation of things’ in Isobel Parker Philip and Erin Vink (eds.), Daniel Boyd: Treasure Island. (Sydney: Art Gallery New South Wales, 2022)
A forensically detailed exploration of Daniel Boyd’s practice that benefits from her ongoing conversation with the artist and that sifts through the layers and lenses of history and philosophy inherent in the work.
Judges: Michael Fitzgerald and Dr Julie Gough
BEST ART WRITING BY A NEW ZEALAND MĀORI OR PASIFIKA
WINNERS:
Ane Tonga (ed.), Declaration: A Pacific Feminist Agenda. (Auckland: Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, 2022)
This book sets new directions and standards in relation to writing about Moana and her peoples. The essays push new directions of scholarship, celebrating artists and practices across the seas, media, time, place and space.
and
Dan Taulapapa McMullin, Yuki Kihara, Ngahuia Te Awekotuku, Chantal Spitz and Daniel Satele for essays in Natalie King (ed.), Paradise Camp by Yuki Kihara. (Thames and Hudson, 2022)
The Paradise Camp catalogue has provided a platform for new writing and thinking by and about gender and sexuality across the Moana. Each writer is passionate about the importance of our inclusive histories. They write about artists most notably Yuki Kihara who have been using their artistic practice to return ancestral stories to present generations.
HIGHLY COMMENDED:
Léuli Eshrāghi, ‘Bambae Ol Stamba Fasin Blong Lukaoyem Mo Kasem Ol Wanwan Saed Blong Solwora I No Save Lusum’ in Isobel Parker Philip and Erin Vink (eds.), Daniel Boyd: Treasure Island. (Sydney: Art Gallery New South Wales, 2022)
This essay shifts easily between complex ideas, Pacific concepts and the world of museums and art galleries. The author engages with many different aspects of Pacific art practice, introducing new terms and making strong connections across the moana. His positionality comes through in every sentence.
and
Bridget Reweti, Ariana Tikao, Nina Tonga, Matariki Williams and Maree Mills
for essays in Melanie Oliver and Bridget Reweti (eds.), Māori Moving Image. (Christchurch: Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū, 2022)
This book offers writing and thinking about Māori moving image, providing important biographies and contexts for this new field.
JUDGES: Associate Professor Ngarino Ellis & Nathan Pōhio
BEST SCHOLARLY ARTICLE IN THE AUSTRALIAN & NEW ZEALAND JOURNAL OF ART
WINNER:
Matthew Martin, ‘A Peripatetic Virgin: A Seventeenth-Century Ivory Carving from Manila in the National Gallery of Victoria’, (vol. 22, no. 1, 2022)
The article was selected because of its innovative art historiographical framework drawn from relatively recent formulations of a ‘global art history.’ Blending theoretical elaboration and empirical speculation Martin’s account of a late 17th century ivory head of the Virgin Mary exemplifies a global art history rubric that eschews traditional art historical concerns with national, cultural and geographic origins, as well as centre-periphery models of cultural exchange. Instead, the ivory head is analysed as a ‘peripatetic’ object: a vector of multiple, trans-cultural exchanges and colonialist networks, and as an object whose meaning and uses have changed over time.
Judges: Dr Mingyuan Hu and Dr Toni Ross
BEST UNIVERSITY ART MUSEUM EXHIBITION CATALGOUE
WINNER:
Kate ten Buuren and Maya Hodge (eds.), Collective Movements: First Nations Collectives, Collaborations and Creative Practices. (Melbourne: Monash University Publishing, 2022)
Through the examination of a series of arts organisations across Victoria from the 1970s to the present, Collective Movements considers the collective cultural practices, actions, and mobilisations of First Nations peoples, as well as the forms and the rationale behind the formation of creative collectives. The extensive and original research that is presented in Collective Movements – as interviews, essays, reflections, artworks, and contextual images – asserts that collectivism is a central component of the process of cultural creation for Victorian Aboriginal people/communities. It posits Australian First Nations cultural practices within a larger ecosystem of cultural creation that spans millennia. Additionally, Collective Movements extends and contributes knowledge to the broader understanding of creative processes across the visual and performing arts.
Generated by an intergenerational curatorial team that exemplifies the collective processes, Collective Movements draws upon diverse voices, experiences, reflections, and perspectives to highlight how First Nations people work together. These perspectives are presented and reinforced by a thoughtful, bold and effective design that ensures the accessibility of the publication’s content. Collective Movements gives witness to and conveys the intimacies of cultural collectivism; how it serves the individual’s wellbeing as well as the formation, maintenance, continuity and sustainability of familial and community networks.
Dr Diana Baker-Smith and Dr Joanna Barrkman
BEST SMALL EXHIBITION CATALOGUE
WINNER:
Felicity Milburn and Kim Paton, Cheryl Lucas: Shaped by Schist and Scoria (Christchurch: Christchurch Art Gallery/Te Puna o Waiwhetū, 2022)
This highly accessible work develops fascinating insights into the medium of ceramics and Cheryl Lucas’s unique way of handing it. The curiosity over the primacy of the material has a probing phenomenological edge, beautifully expressed in evocative discussions by Felicity Milburn and Kim Paton in a way that is echoed by the format, images and design. In addition, the book provides a context for ceramics in New Zealand and situates Lucas and her contribution to the field.
HIGHLY COMMENDED:
Lee Kinsella (ed.), Sustaining the art of practice. (Perth: Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery, 2022)
Beautifully written, this work engages with absorbing content concerning women’s art. The essays take many imaginative turns and refresh our understanding of women’s practice with candour and insight. While exploring intricate social narratives, the authors such as Helen Grace enrich the field with their own experience and documentation. The text and images complement one another and form an engaging glimpse into an important area of Australian art.
and
Melissa Keys, wHole. (Melbourne: Heide Museum of Modern Art, 2022)
This excellent work is conceived around an exhibition, to which it contributes not only valuable information but a fine sense of paradox and the poetic meaning of the works included. The format and design elements help walk the reader through the concept for the exhibition and then through each of the works themselves.
Judges: Dr Melanie Cooper and Associate Professor Robert Nelson
BEST MEDIUM EXHIBITION CATALOGUE
WINNER:
Lesley Harding & Kendrah Morgan (eds.), Barbara Hepworth, In Equilibrium. (Melbourne: Heide Museum of Modern Art, 2022)
The title In Equilibrium for the first survey exhibition in Australia of the work of English artist Dame Barbara Hepworth (1903-1975) is as fitting a descriptor for the approach and a/effect of Hepworth’s classically modernist sculpture as it is for this catalogue as a record of and accompaniment to the exhibition. In the accessible and informative scholarship of its writing and in the clean, crisp design (by Michael Gibb) of its presentation, this publication is a collaborative triumph attesting to first-class art museography. A particular strength is Jane Eckett’s essay Hepworth and Australia, and the inclusion of historical texts by Hepworth (from 1937 and 1946) and critic Robert Hughes (1966).
HIGHLY COMMENDED:
Melanie Oliver and Bridget Reweti (eds.), Māori Moving Image. (Christchurch: Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū, 2022)
This impressive bilingual (te reo Māori, English) catalogue is a pioneering dive into the 40-year history of Māori film, animation and video art. Focussing on both established and emerging artists, the authors stake critical ground mapping the confluence of Māori visual art with oral history and performance traditions, together with changes in technology. The publication documents and eminently builds on a trio of exhibitions drawing on a physical archive and discussion space, comprehensively forging the subject with cohesive content and design.
JUDGES: Dr Wendy Garden and Maurice O’Riordan
BEST LARGE EXHIBITION CATALOGUE
WINNERS:
Ted Gott, Angela Hesson, Myles Russell-Cook, Meg Slater and Pip Wallis (eds.), Queer: Stories from the NGV Collection. (Melbourne: National Gallery of Victoria. 2022)
This weighty, stylish, and richly illustrated catalogue is an encyclopaedic journey across centuries, cultures, and media from the overtly queer to heterosexual icons, from the discreet to the flamboyant, from the political to the persecuted, the everyday to the exotic. With a text encompassing five editors, 36 contributors and running to over 620 pages, the range of research is impressively multifaceted and, in many cases, profound and scholarly, and admirably achieves its aim of vividly illuminating what was once invisible. Described as ‘more than an exhibition catalogue’, the publication reflects the NGV’s larger ‘Queer project’ that explored the Gallery’s 160-year history and collection through a queer lens. The publication reflects the institution’s serious commitment to communicating the story of queer culture to the wider community and represents a significant contribution to international studies in this field.
and
Nigel Borell (ed.), Toi Tu Toi Ora: Contemporary Maori Art. (Auckland: Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki and Penguin Books, 2022)
This substantial, hard cover catalogue is an origin story binding the past to the present and powerfully celebrates the art, myth, and creativity of the Pacific Aotearoa Indigenous people’s cultural ‘home and history’. It spectacularly asserts Maori tradition as a rightful realm within the contemporary Eurocentric canon. With some 200 illustrations, exemplary design and quality production, this beautiful catalogue captures and complements the remarkable Toi Tu Toi Ora exhibition – the largest in Auckland Art Gallery’s history that encompassed 11 Maori artists, 9 site-specific commissions, and over 300 works of art. Representing a major contribution to both Maori art’s traditional and current history and the art history discipline more widely, the catalogue is a model for future projects that seek to ambitiously re-imagine contemporary culture.
HIGHLY COMMENDED:
Andrew Nicholls, Emma Poletti and Mags Webster (eds.), Tracks We Share: Contemporary Art of the Pilbara. (Perth: FORM, 2021)
This landmark catalogue mapping the art of the Pilbara communities is a collaborative project that ‘resurfaces’ the old cartography of the Pilbara region and reclaims Indigenous history through its contemporary artists. The catalogue’s impact lies in its elegantly designed layout, lavish high quality imagery and potent mix of Indigenous voices drawn from the museum world, academia and ‘from on Country’. It is a valuable and relevant contribution to Australian Indigenous culture, especially for its concern with cultural preservation, the recent desecration of sacred places and its sustained focus on a particular region’s unique art, artists, and art centres.
and
Anneke Jaspers and Hannah Mathews (eds.), Vivienne Binns: On and Through the Surface
(Melbourne and Sydney: Monash University Museum of Art, Museum of Contemporary Art of Australia and Power Institute, 2022)
This is a comprehensive monographic survey of one of Australia’s major feminist artists, whose six-decade career has explored issues ranging from gender to vernacular aesthetics to cross cultural collaboration within and outside the gallery. Pictorially rich and extensively illustrated (with both works of art and rare archival photographs of installations and art happenings), this large format catalogue is dense and layered in its presentation, in keeping with the artist’s experimental approach to her painting practice, community projects and studio innovations. The volume presents an impressive array of new scholarship including commissioned essays from art historians from across different generations, a 2021 interview with the artist, reprintings of early artist statements and historical texts as well as an extended biography.
Judges: Associate Professor Alison Inglis and Dr Sheridan Palmer