Congratulations to James Newitt who has won the 2009 Qantas Foundation Encouragement of Australian Contemporary Art Award for Tasmania. The winner’s prize consists of $13,000 and air travel on Qantas worth $10,000. Entrants were required to submit a body of work, rather than one individual piece.

Other prize winners were Tiffany Cole (ACT), Izabela Pluta (NSW), Mariana Murdilnga (NT), Laith McGregor (QLD), Peter McKay (SA), Nick Selentisch (VIC) and Pip and Pop - Nicole Andrijevic and Tanya Schultz (WA).

James Newitt
Dreams: Carpark Sequence 2009
Archival print
120 x 50cm

Criterion artist Mary Scott has been awarded the prize for Drawing in the City of Hobart Art Prize 2009. The prizes were awarded this year in categories of Drawing and Sculpture.

The prize was awarded for her work, White House, Red, Green, Yellow, Blue Rooms 2009.
This work was created in response to Mary’s experience in New York during the final week of the 2008 election campaign that brought Barack Obama to the presidency. Curiosity about the potential of an African-American residing in the White House led to an internet search on the executive offices and official residence of the American President. While musing about black and white, Mary found the colours blue, red, yellow and green. Officially named the Blue Room, the Yellow Oval Room, the Red Room and the Green Room, these are used as primary reception rooms and state parlours at the White House. They are themed by early republic and world history: the Federal style for the Green Room, French Empire for the Blue Room, American Empire for the Red Room, and Louis XVI for the Yellow Oval Room.

For more details of the prize, click here.

The works below comprise:
Mary Scott
White House, Red, Green, Yellow, Blue Rooms 2009
Graphite, colour pencil on paper
Four panels each 70 x 100cm

Matt Coyle has been commissioned to do a series of eight drawings for Art & Australia. The first of the drawings will appear in the Winter 2009 edition. The series is called The Shades and the drawings are a progression from the themes in his graphic novel, Worry Doll, and his 2008 series of drawings Night Stills.

Art & Australia will also acquire the series once completed in Autumn 2010.

Click here for a link to the feature.

The Shades (detail) 2009

Neil Haddon’s work has been included in the 2009 Arthur Guy Memorial Painting Prize at the Bendigo Art Gallery in Victoria. The exhibition begins on 9 August, and continues until 27 September.

For details, click here.

Purblind (Guru) 2009
170 x 150cm
High gloss enamel and oil paint on aluminium

Adam Geczy’s Grumpy Old Men of Paris photographs are currently in an exhibition at Macquarie University in Sydney. Entitled “Remembering Paris”, the exhibition is curated by Leonard Janiszewski and Gina Hammond, and includes work by Maria Miranda and Norie Neumark as well as Adam Geczy. The show runs from Thursday, 16 July to Friday, 14 August.

For more information use this link.

Adam Geczy
Grumpy Old Men of Paris I 2006
Chromogenic archival ink print
100 x 1518 cm
Edition of six