Portia Geach Memorial Award 2008
Australia’s most significant prize for celebrating the creativity of Australian female portrait artists, the Portia Geach Memorial Award (valued at $18,000), was won by Jude Rae for her work Self Portrait 2008 (the year my husband left). Jude first won this Award in 2005 for her work Large Interior (Micky Allan).
This year’s winner was announced on Thursday 2 October at a cocktail party held at the National Trust’s S.H. Ervin Gallery. The event was opened by Fenella Kernebone.
The Judging Panel highly commended Jo Bertini’s Luise Hercus at the Widows’ Waterhole – Yarluyendi Country and Shonah Tescott’s Wendy Sharpe in Paris.
294 artists entered this year’s competition with 56 being selected for the exhibition. Commenting on this year’s entries, the Judging Panel was particularly impressed by the freshness and the diversity of approach to the challenge of portrait painting displayed by the artists. The judges believed they were amongst some of the best they have judged over the last decade. To view this selection enter here or to read the Judges’ Report enter here.
Judges for the 2008 Award were Barry Pearce, Aida Tomescu and Jane Watters.
The Portia Geach Memorial Award exhibition will be held at the SH Ervin Gallery, Observatory Hill, Sydney from 3 October to 9 November. Opening hours are Tuesday to Sunday, 11am to 5pm (closed on Monday).
A selection of this year’s works is available below for viewing.
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Winner - Jude Rae, Self Portrait 2008 (the year my husband left)
Commenting on her win, Rae said that in 2005 it was a very special honour to receive the Portia Geach Award. “It is doubly an honour to be awarded the 2008 Portia Geach, a second time and after only three years!”
About Jude Rae
Jude Rae was born in Sydney in 1956. From 1976 to 1988 she studied at the University of Sydney and College of Fine Arts (UNSW) where she also lectured and tutored in Art History/Theory. Her first solo exhibition was at Painters Gallery in 1987. In 1988 she was awarded an Australia Council Residency in Paris after which she moved to New Zealand with her husband. While living in New Zealand from 1990 to 1998 she was awarded an MA from the University of Canterbury, worked in a variety of jobs including arts administrator and university tutor and lecturer, and consolidated her practice as a painter.
Since returning to Australia Jude has taught at the National Art School in Sydney and the ANU School of Art in Canberra. In 2005 she won the Portia Geach Memorial Award with her portrait of fellow artist Micky Allen. A monograph on Jude Rae’s work with text by Justin Paton, was published by Ouroborus Publications in 2006. Her work is primarily represented by Jensen Gallery in Auckland New Zealand. She is also represented by Helen Maxwell Gallery in Canberra and Jonathan Smart Gallery in Christchurch (NZ). Her work is held in public and private collections in Australia and New Zealand.
Jude is currently enrolled as a PhD candidate at the ANU School of Art and lives in Canberra with her dog Tilly.
About Self Portrait 2008 (the year my husband left)
I painted this self portrait whilst pondering my new status as a single middle-aged woman on the unstable income of an artist, “self employed”. It is based on Velasquez’s “Las Meninas” (“The Handmaidens”) which I saw recently, along with the collection of his astonishing paintings at the Prado in Madrid. I have taken great liberties with the master’s work, reversing the composition and subtracting the key figures of the Infanta and her retinue, and the royal parents who are mirrored in the dark interior of the original.
Only the dog remains, with me standing in the place of Velasquez himself, under the glare of the studio lights. I do not envy his position but I do aspire to his subtle virtuosity and breadth of vision. There is something intensely compassionate in his portraits of royalty and courtiers, jesters and buffoons alike. These characterizations reveal all the complexities, burdens, negotiations and compromises of 17thC Spanish court life from top to bottom. For all our technological advances over the last 400 years one senses that human relations – all those complexities, negotiations, burdens and compromises – remain remarkably similar.
Highly Commended - Jo Bertini, Luise Hercus at the Widows’ Waterhole – Yarluyendi Country
In June this year I joined Australian Desert Expeditions (as I do every year) on an Archaeological Research Expedition into the Simpson Desert as the expedition artist. We travelled to a remote, secret, sacred burial site, on a high dune beside a waterhole, where, up to 500 years ago, at least 80 women in mourning cast off their gypsum caps from their shaven heads and scattered them on this desert grave. Accompanied by a group of esteemed experts from a range of National Institutions and across various academic disciplines, (history, natural science, archaeology, anthropology, linguistics and ethnography) as well as descendants of the old Wangkanguru people, we had walked to the waterhole to research, document and decipher the past history of this landscape.
One of our group, the linguist, Luise Hercus, an 82 year old, European woman, was described to me, as a ‘Living National Treasure‘. She is “the preserver of the keys to the Simpson Desert, a living ark of near lost grammars, song cycles and words” (Nicolas Rothwell). Luise is the last fluent speaker of Dieri, Tirari, Wangkanguru and Arabana, and has been pivotal in recording and preserving aboriginal sacred sites and beliefs, and has inspired most of the research projects underway in the Simpson and it’s margins.
I watched while Luise and Nicolas Rothwell sat down, on a windswept dune above the site, talking. She described to Nicolas how the last songman, Mick McLean Irinjili, had another name, Palku-Bula-Thanckaiwarnda, which meant two banks of cloud sitting down together, “Whenever you see two banks of cloud like that, he said, think of me”. And for the most part, that’s exactly what I do. Luise Hercus was widowed in 1973.
Highly Commended - Shonah Trescott, Wendy Sharpe in Paris
I befriended Wendy Sharpe at the National Art School when I was a student. She was a painter I much admired and I was fortunate to be a pupil in her class. As a teacher her enthusiasm, support and encouragement was pivotal to my position as a young female painter.
Wendy is now a close friend of mine whom I have shared the joy of painting, the passion of traveling and indeed, life!
I am currently working and living in Europe and when I can I visit Wendy on her travels.
I last visited her at her 'Cite Des Arts' studio residency in Paris where she was working up a storm! And I was struck by the energy of her work and the honest enjoyment she found in directly observing the lively streets of Paris.
The walls of her studio were covered, bursting with paintings of energy and freedom, and so too was the way I observed the painter, Wendy Sharpe in Paris.
Robin-Mary Calvert, Honky Tonk Women
My work more often than not involves the dress up box, playfulness, and unbridled wit, and is usually a tad risqué… It certainly could be seen as such as participants are always having reams of rich congenial fun since all inhibitions have been methodically stripped away.
In this instance, I have my two favorite models helping me to dress for what well ….I’ll let you be the judge of that. This work could be a snapshot from one of my soirees involving the consumption of some fabulous wine or on this occasion, champagne out in the back in my studio (also my sanctuary). Because my paintings are autobiographical, it only seems fair, that I put myself in the picture, so to speak, thus I become the voyeur as well as the subject. The urgency is palpable as sentiments are being conveyed: life is to be had; life is short; life is a celebration.
These images, these “slices of life” are loaded with sexual tension and innuendo. As the focal point of the painting, I can contemplate, with a bit of a giggle, the games that we play and the exploration of our sexuality for the potential delight and bemusement of any voyeur who might be lurking in the vicinity. At times I step back and become the omniscient madam juxtaposed against those in the making. Empowered physically, emotionally, and sexually, I habitually portray myself as contemporary woman; confident, assured and determined to live, love, laugh. ‘Life’s a gift…unwrap it!!!
Marina Finlay, Judy Cassab with Bruegal's "The Peasant Dance"
living in Vienna, Judy completed a copy of Bruegel’s “The Peasant Dance” by visiting The Kunsthistorische Museum every day for approximately three months. The copy is one of my favourite paintings in Judy’s vast collection.
Virginia Glover, Three Spaces: Reading the Self
Both as a painter and as an architect, I work with space and the way bodies inhabit it. This triptych grew from a series of paintings that explore relationships between objects in a box - an abstracted and imaginary version of this 'space'. One object, a mirror, alters the box's dimensions, traps light and reflects the self. By posing the question "What stands in front of the mirror?" it allows me to explore ideas about spatial ambiguity, illusion and disjointed readings in a painted 'space' where three dimensional planes are reduced to surface.
Jan Handel, Self Portrait as Battista Sforza
Battista Sforza (1446 – 1472), the wife of Federico, Duke of Urbino, is still, proud and fragile in her posthumous portrait, painted by Piero della Francesca in 1474.
Pegboard – utilitarian and machine-made, with a holey rhythm across its surface, is a material from our time.
Being someone else, dressing up, transplanted to another place and time is a recurring fantasy of many ‘modern’ women.
Combining these elements, I hope to suggest a connection through time, between old and new, and to allude to the possibilities of changing identity through context and representation.
Juliet Holmes à Court, from the quiet of the studio
Much of my week is spent on my own, in the quiet of the studio. I heard a wise old artist say, “if you need to be constantly surrounded by people you probably won’t survive the life of an artist" - for it is in that quietude, often looking both inward to self, and out to your painting that creates a place for ideas to develop.
In this self portrait, I place myself in the studio looking upwards perhaps seeking divine inspiration before the hard work of reflecting a reflection, and the even harder work of juggling the holding a mirror above my head and sketching simultaneously...not an easy feat.
Dale Kentwell, Self Portrait - Themeda australis
Themeda australis is the botanical name of the windswept kangaroo grass on this headland in northern NSW. I did the sketch for this work on a family camping holiday.
The painting then developed in the studio.
Rebecca Lavis, Self Portrait with Ginger at Home
My dad died today
I miss his handwriting that’s hard to read
I miss his voice
I miss my childhood
I miss him telling me I am a good mother
I miss the sadness when we say goodbye
Amanda Penrose Hart, With Respect
I wanted to capture the friendship between Roddy and Richard born out of their common interests in painting, sculpture and law. Hence the title With Respect.
Hon Roderick Pitt Meagher AO QC, retired Judge of Appeal, Supreme Court of New South Wales and Richard Weinstein, Barrister at Law.
Sharon West, A Self-Portrait as a Victorian Anthropologist in Fighting Gunditjmara Country
I have imagined myself as an eccentric lady anthropologist clad in a possum skin cloak and bearing the subjects of my studies, although in postcolonial reality I am a mild mannered teacher at the Indigenous Arts Unit of RMIT University. This pose and set up has been inspired by depictions of naturalist Joseph Banks clothed and adorned with the proceeds of his South Pacific collecting trips. These themes both represent a colonial fascination (and appropriation) of Indigenous culture.
The kingplate I wear has been presented by the Gunditjmara people, as a signature of my social status and serves as a thematic inversion of a popular governmental practice. The black cockatoo enjoying the flowers on my bonnet is a Gunditjmara bird totem.
The lower left hand portrait is of respected Koori Elder and my workplace mentor, Aunty Bunta Patten and the adjacent figure, Jacky Jacky, is imagined, and symbolic of the hybrid names attached to Koori people. Both are dressed in European attire in opposition to my ‘tribal’ look.
A Victorian Western District landscape is in the background, the tribal grounds of the Gunditjmara who Aunty Bunta attests were known as ‘fighting’ due to their fierce resistance in inter-tribal and settler conflicts.
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