Congratulations to the winners and highly commended of the AWAPAs for 2024
BEST BOOK
The AAANZ Best Book prize is a premier award of the association which sets the highest criteria in our discipline: significant and original art historical scholarship and a benchmark in academic publishing. With this in mind, the judges looked for new historical research that positioned its argument within current art historical scholarship. After careful consideration, the judges recommend that the prize not be awarded this year.
Judges: Associate Professor Catherine de Lorenzo and Professor Ian McLean
BEST ANTHOLOGY
Sponsored by the Australian Institute of Art History, University of Melbourne
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:
Sarah Scott, Helen McDonald and Caroline Jordan (eds.), Crosscurrents in Australian First Nations and Non-Indigenous Art. (Routledge, 2023)
This is an outstanding collection of essays that focuses on the interface between First Nations art and artists and the broader national and international cultural institutions, the art market and non-Indigenous peoples. The three non-Indigenous editors have set up a collaborative dialogue between First Nations and non-Indigenous authors and have invited scholars to examine a number of important case studies that examine the complex transcultural exchange between different parts of society. An achievement of the book is that First Nations artists and curators have been given their own voice and articulate the issues of importance to them. None of this research has been previously published.
Addressing the judging criteria, the judges noted the originality and rigour of scholarship, the contribution that this anthology makes to this important area of research and the manner in which complex ideas are clearly communicated to a wider audience.
HIGHLY COMMENDED:
Kathleen Davidson and Molly Duggins (eds.), Sea Currents in Nineteenth-Century Art, Science and Culture: Commodifying the Ocean World. (Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2023)
This is a fascinating and innovative anthology that examines the way scientists, tourists, manufacturers, as well as artists and designers, embraced and assessed the value of the sea and its products in the 19th century. The various essays, by examining human interaction with the oceans, demonstrate the impact on marine consumerism, museums, exploration and colonialism. Beyond the sublime seascapes, storms and sea wrecks that are part of the standard diet of art history, these essays explore the commodification of the ocean world with their far-reaching impact on the arts. Many of the essays bring new original research to a broader audience and through a combination of image and text make this into a pioneering publication.
Judges: Associate Professor Robert Gaston and Emeritus Sasha Grishin AM FAHA
BEST ARTIST-LED PUBLICATION
Sponsored by Monash Art, Design & Architecture, Monash University
WINNER:
David Egan, Colour Handling. (Naarm/Melbourne: Discipline, 2022)
Out of a competitive and extremely diverse field the judges have awarded the prize to Colour Handling by David Egan, published by Discipline. This book represents a successful translation of a practice-based PhD into a lively and readable series of essays on colour, centering around different works art from (primarily) paintings, to cinema, to ‘spirit’ drawings. The essays draw on Egan’s wide ranging erudition, his interest in sf, and his hands-on understanding of colour as a painter. The publishers have produced an attractive little book that sits in the hand well, but still has quite good reproductions. They have kept the cost down by printing in Estonia, making the book relatively affordable for everyone.
Judges: Associate Professor Martyn Jolly and Associate Professor Robert Nelson
BEST ART WRITING BY AN INDIGENOUS AUSTRALIAN
Sponsored by Art Monthly Australasia
WINNER:
Gary Lee, Heat: Gary Lee, selected texts, art & anthropology. (Darwin: Dishevel Books, 2023)
This is an ambitious book that powerfully reflects on both the personal and the universal, documenting and analysing Gary Lee’s life and art while rigorously exploring Aboriginal art history, queer history, the legacy of colonisation, the role of photography in society, and cultural connections and divides in Australia and around the world.
Judges: Oliver Giles and Associate Professor Stephen Gilchrist
BEST ART WRITING BY A NEW ZEALAND MĀORI OR PASIFIKA
Sponsored by Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puno o Waiwhetū
WINNERS:
Baye Riddell, Ngā Kaihanga Uku: Māori Clay Artists. (Wellington: Te Papa Press)
Ngā Kaihanga Uku: Māori Clay Artists, brings together a group of important Māori artists. Blending biographic and critical analysis, it offers insights into the development of these artists’ practices, situating them within the broader discourse of Māori art, while also highlighting the artists’ voices and stories.
JUDGES: Associate Professor Caroline Vercoe and Matariki Williams
BEST SCHOLARLY ARTICLE IN THE AUSTRALIAN & NEW ZEALAND JOURNAL OF ART
Sponsored by the Power Institute, University of Sydney
WINNER:
James Nguyen, ‘Dispersed Subjects’, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Art, 23:1 (2023)
This article raises some provocative ideas about the ethics of museum collection access and collection conservation where materials of significance to diverse colonised communities are concerned. Where discussion of such issues has often taken place in relation to Indigenous cultural material, this article considers the colonial collection from the perspective of the Vietnamese diaspora in Australia, an important and underrepresented viewpoint. The article draws out the complex, intergenerational dynamics at play in many diaspora communities and how this shapes the relationship between these communities and their displaced cultural heritage, highlighting the need for sensitive and wide-ranging community consultation when working to decolonise museums and their collections.
HIGHLY COMMENDED:
Mique’l Dangeli and Tammi Gissell, ‘Groundswell in the Gallery: North and South Pacific Indigenous Dance in Confluence’, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Art, 23:2 (2023)
Judges: Associate Professor Anthony White and Dr Matthew Martin
BEST UNIVERSITY ART MUSEUM EXHIBITION CATALGOUE
Sponsored by University Art Museums Australia
WINNER:
Naomi Evans (ed.), Chantal Fraser: The Ascended. (Brisbane: Griffith University Art Museum, 2023)
The AAANZ University Art Museums Exhibition Catalogue prize is awarded to Griffith University Art Museum for the catalogue, Chantal Fraser: The Ascended. Congratulations to all involved in the development of this evocative catalogue, including Naomi Evans, Editor.
The presentation of Fraser’s art in this catalogue is engaging and impactful – the thoughtful essays and the high-quality photography in this publication captures her process of making art, the final artworks, their public presentation in various contexts and the performance and engagement elements of her practice. The catalogue and essays perceptively explore the diversity of media and the multi-media dimensions of Fraser’s oeuvre with the use of powerful and provocative imagery and accessible language. A published interview with the artist elucidates her processes of unpacking and deconstructing power structures socially, culturally, creatively and individually to untether herself from known or stereo-typical ways of being. It is also considered noteworthy that Griffith University Art Museum sought to profile Fraser, a Brisbane-based artist whose education and exhibiting career has been largely grounded in that city.
HIGHLY COMMENDED:
Christina Barton (ed.), Energy Work: Kathy Barry / Sarah Smuts-Kennedy. (Wellington: Te Pātaka Toi Adam Art Gallery, 2023)
The highly commended catalogue, Energy Work Kathy Barry Sarh Smuts-Kennedy by Te Pātaka Toi Adams Gallery, demonstrates exceptionally high production values. Its research contributes to enhanced understanding and appreciation of energetic creative processes and site-specific activation of artworks.
Judges: Dr Joanna Barrkman and Dr Katrina Grant
BEST SMALL EXHIBITION CATALOGUE
Sponsored by the University of Melbourne
WINNER:
Rebecca Evans, Milton Moon: Crafting Modernism. (Adelaide: Art Gallery of South Australia, 2023)
The timeliness of this publication is multifaceted: it marks 32 years since the last major survey of Milton Moon’s influential ceramic work, and in the context of another resurgence of popular interest in ceramics, speaks to the necessity of reconsidering and recontextualising the narrative of modernist art-making in Australia. In this sense, it is significant that the essays locate Moon not only firmly in place in South Australia and among family and community, but also grapple with how Moon’s cultural engagement with Japan informed his practice. We see through both the writing and the beautifully photographed work how dialogues with painting and painters position Moon’s work within with the mid-century articulation of Australian identity. The rigorous essays do an important role in reconsidering and adding to previous scholarship and reception of the work. Writing by Damien Moon also suggests how this catalogue will be of use to practitioners as well as historians.
Judges: Dr Karen Hall and Dr Sarah Scott
BEST MEDIUM EXHIBITION CATALOGUE
Sponsored by the Australian Institute of Art History, University of Melbourne
WINNER:
Clothilde Bullen (ed.), Yhonnie Scarce: The Light of Day. (Perth: Power Publications and the Art Gallery of Western Australia, 2023)
Yhonnie Scarce: Light of Day (ed. Clothilde Bullen) makes an important and original contribution to the field of contemporary Indigenous art practice. Five articulate and evocative essays by women writers including curator Clothilde Bullen are presented alongside an artist interview to highlight vital connections between Scarce’s impactful work and the complex histories embedded within them. Focusing on the sensitive materiality of Scarce’s practice and the urgency of her work in a national and global context, this publication is beautifully designed and richly illustrated throughout to accompany the exhibition presented by the Art Gallery of Western Australia.
HIGHLY COMMENDED:
Justin Paton, Dreamhome: Stories of Art and Shelter. (Sydney: Art Gallery of New South Wales, 2023)
Dreamhome: Stories of Art and Shelter combines attentive visual analysis with sophisticated personal inquiry to reflect upon the many meanings and experiences of home. Paton writes in an engaging reflective style that provides both critical insights and accessibility to a broad readership. Produced alongside the inaugural exhibition for a new building expanding on the Art Gallery of New South Wales, this publication highlights many works from the permanent collection and engages viewers with newly commissioned works. Overall, Dreamhome remains true to the curatorial rationale and premise of the exhibition and is to be highly commended in teasing out a range of perspectives connected to place, memory, identity and experiences of home.
JUDGES: Dr Melanie Cooper and Dr Wendy Garden
BEST LARGE EXHIBITION CATALOGUE
Sponsored by the Australian Institute of Art History, University of Melbourne
WINNERS:
Isobel Parker Philip Wallis (ed.), Hoda Afshar: A Curve is a Broken Line. (Sydney: Art Gallery of New South Wales, 2023)
If art has the power to challenge systems, then this catalogue does that. Hoda Afshar’s photography is collaborative with her subjects, homeless victims and incarcerated refugees. The exhibition catalogue is a poignant and poetic example of documentary photography that reveals the abuse of power and border protection brutality as seen from the victims’ perspective and the erasure of whistleblowers. Afshar’s restrained yet elegantly explicit photographs reveal how censorship can blind and she exposes the current horror and displacement of events through war, persecution, and its aftermath. Taken together with the visual narratives, the text exemplifies the brutality and beauty, the politics and ethical and translates them into a realm of urgent compassion.
The design reflects the quality of the photographic material, it is exquisite, subtle and elegant. ‘A curve is a broken line’ becomes the metaphor for vulnerability and strength, and dust that addresses the timelessness of a deserted world and the remains of collective memory. This is a significant catalogue that conveys deeply complex emotions and a world in crisis, yet one where beauty can be found
and
Sally Rose (ed.), 1001 Remarkable Objects. (Sydney: Powerhouse Publishing, 2023)
This is a delight to hold and behold, a dramatic black box of a book that offers an extravagant and inspiring survey of 1001 objects from the Powerhouse Museum’s immense collection. For all its seeming density, the size and weight of the catalogue is comfortable, while the design is outstanding, skilfully weaving together a myriad array of brilliantly coloured images with sensitive and original essays and detailed captions. The encyclopaedic nature of the Powerhouse collection required a diverse group of contributors, encompassing art and design historians, cabaret artists and musicians, psychologists and festival directors, curators, and artists. Their different voices and perspectives encourage reflections on the nature of creativity and the act of collecting itself as well as the ability of collections to hold a mirror to society. The catalogue makes an important contribution to our understanding of the objects, beautiful things in and of themselves, and their rich historical context and acquisition process. It is impressive in terms of its design quality as well as being a qualitative record and revelation of a remarkable cultural collection.
HIGHLY COMMENDED:
Petra Kayser (ed.), Rembrandt: True to Life. (Melbourne: National Gallery of Victoria, 2023)
Petra Kayser’s intelligent approach to this exhibition catalogue – the choice of authors (leading Rembrandt scholars, curators, and conservators), the structure of the contents and the interplay of word and image – ensures that it is thoughtful, balanced and engaging. The text conveys a vivid sense of the artist’s real life, his brilliance as a visual storyteller, and his use of materials and workshop practice. All these themes come together to explain why Rembrandt is regarded as one of the most celebrated of European artists in terms of social analysis and commentary. The catalogue showcases the NGV’s outstanding collection of Rembrandt works on paper, highlighting its strengths and locating these works against a selection of major paintings from international collections which presents a fresh and insightful overview of the artist’s life and work.
The design is strong, with generous full-page illustrations of individual works and details. The scholarship is comprehensive, accessible and brings into focus new information and perspectives on an internationally significant collection of Rembrandt’s work in Australia.
and
Rachel Franks and Richard Neville, Reading the Rooms: Behind the paintings of the State Library of NSW. (Sydney: NewSouth Publishing, 2023)
This weighty tome is a marvellous exploration of the significant collection of oil paintings in the State Library of New South Wales – a rich and important national treasure that is insufficiently known until now. The catalogue is extremely well-researched – with fifty contributors providing scholarly accounts of the works under the broad headings of People, Place, Power, Providers, Pastimes and Posterity. As these themes make clear, the State Library has acquired these paintings not simply as works of art, but as historical documents in their own right that shed fresh light on New South Wales’ – and our nation’s – complex story. The design is of very high quality with emphasis on visually engaging the reader through the beautifully illustrated text – both longer sectional essays and shorter commentaries on individual works of art.
All in all, an impressive publication that is a great testament to the State Library’s outstanding collection of paintings.
Judges: Associate Professor Alison Inglis and Dr Sheridan Palmer