Award Winners

Judges Comments:
Closed But Never Locked is a highly skilled and resolved work. The fluidity of the stretched form contrasts with the materiality of the hand carved object. The darkness and apparent weight is intriguing and powerful and sustains a long thoughtful engagement. This is an important work from a highly talented and significant artist that will greatly add to the City of Armadale art collection.

Judges Comments:
On the Sixth Day (Houseplants and Improvement Paraphernalia) is an engaging visual document of life during COVID. In using pen and ink to draw individuals as they flock to the local Bunnings, Fearns-Pheasant presents a record of our strange group behaviour. By piecing together sheets of paper she has completed her own COVID project to great effect and it is a valuable and necessary record well-placed in the City’s Collection

Judges Comments:
Rohin Kickett’s exploration of the constraints and controls placed upon the Aboriginal peoples of the south west of Western Australia is a stark and confronting one. Kickett’s method of application of acrylic on canvas in this work (and the series) is one that reflects the reality of violence and extremism of the times. Aboriginal people across this nation were “controlled and contained” by force of arms first, then by policy and now by the poverty of a displaced people struggling to be heard properly on the lands of their ancestors. Kickett’s use of a rifle to punch a projectile through balloons filled with acrylic paint remind us that that time then – really wasn’t all that long ago – in the history of this state or this nation. A well realised work.

Judges Comments:
Road Plinth is a beautiful and sophisticated representation of a sculptural intervention. Emphasised by the single point perspective, the relationship between the central object and the landscape is key to the artwork’s successful resolution.

Judges Comments:
Hilary Phillips-Ryley beautifully painted 35 eyes and each is closely observed and distinct. Windows is a heartfelt demonstration of connection and commitment to those people who support and sustain us. A unique and evocative painting.

Judge’s Comments:
“An utterly compelling, enigmatic image. The dynamic composition is simultaneously stop-motion and fluid, the players intimately connected yet disengaged. Christophe’s command of light, shade and texture enables this image to equally address concerns in the discipline of contemporary photography yet affords the work the impact and power that a more visceral object such as a classical painting possesses.”

Judge’s Comments
“This intriguing image immediately captures our attention. The composition involves a clever conversion of an image in a mirror into another portrait. The well-handled areas of paint are a joyous celebration of detail, such as the sandled feet, allowing the viewer to be transported to witness the scene as the artist did.”

Judge’s Comments
“This simple still life involves a clever play of ideas on the subject of painting – the painting of a painting brush. Kathryn’s bravura use of colour and deployment of technique is applauded and the modest size of this painting belies its punch.”

Judge’s Comments
“This sculptural arrangement is deceptively unassuming, yet it is a provocative work which breaks almost every rule and tradition in sculpture. It commands the space in which it stands, dispensing with a plinth yet reaching to the ceiling, swelling its own volume and co-opting the building for its own purposes. It does so, though, with the inventive use of the humblest of materials and unconventional construction techniques. The surrealist forms evoke journeys, and bodies, from umbilical beginnings to withered ends.”