Award: Gerry Gauntlett Award

Artwork Name: The Magus

Artist: Robert Gear

Judges’ Comments: A theatrical and masterful piece. It makes you think about our inability to respond to devastation. It draws you in, yet makes you stop at the same time. Making you wonder what we may shroud or reveal in environmental disasters.

Award: Highly Commended Award

Artwork Name: What is Around the Corner?

Artist: Genevieve Hartney

Judges’ Comments: An individual way of using colour palette and perspective to describe landscape in a structural and an unsuspected way. Altering the picture plane by suggesting flatness and depth of field using and unusual technique to describe an actual place remembered.

Award: Local Artist Award

Artwork Name: Life is a Sweet River

Artist: Leesa Padget

Judges’ Comments: This artwork impressed with its use of paper and pencil to convey an enchanted vision. In this picture the natural environment is shown as a revelation of interconnectedness, living things, tiny insects, fish and birds draw the view close.

Award: City of Armadale Award

Artwork Name: Providence

Artist: Wade Taylor

Judges’ Comments: A snapshot feel of a mundane scene. Painted intently commenting on the suburban sprawl. Painting in a way to deliver an unsettling vision.

Award: Aboriginal Artist Award

Artwork Name: Facing the Beast

Artist: Sydney Phillips

Judges’ Comments: What united the judges on this piece was its expressive quality. Conveying an intensity of emotion.

Award: City of Armadale Award

Artwork Name: Malapropism #2

Artist: Christophe Canato

Judges’ Comments: A powerful layered image that questions our perceptions of masculinity in a universal context.

Award: Local Artist Award

Artwork Name: Saying Goodbye

Artist: Clinton Price

Judges’ Comments: Intriguing tender work that captivates you before becoming fully aware of what is being portrayed. The technique is beautiful, with careful lighting and composition, contained within the soft rounded corners of the aluminium panel.

Award: Aboriginal Artist Award

Artwork Name: Despair

Artist: Sydney Phillips

Judges’ Comments: This is an intimate and personal work. He has communicated his journey within the artistic process while reflecting on his own culture.

Award: Gerry Gauntlet Award

Artwork Name: Now Where Are We? #1

Artist: Michael Francas

Judges’ Comments: A mature timeless vision, with deliberate rawness within the execution.

Award: Highly Commended

Artwork Name: Ash Abounds

Artist: Matthew McAlpine

Judges’ Comments: A silent visual protest that addresses major topics that concern humanity.

Award: Highly Commended

Artwork Name: Windows

Artist: Hilary Phillips-Ryley

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.

Award: Gerry Gauntlett Award

Artwork Name: Road Plinth

Artist: Kate Webb

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.

Award: Aboriginal Artist Award

Artwork Name: Curfew

Artist: Rohin Kickett

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.

Award: Local Artist Award

Artwork Name: On the Sixth Day (Houseplants and Improvement Paraphernalia)

Artist: Julie Fearns-Pheasant

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.

Award: City of Armadale Art Award

Artwork Name: Closed But Never Locked

Artist: Abdul-Rahman Abdullah

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.

Award: Gerry Gauntlett Award

Artwork Name: Fanrandole

Artist: Christophe Canato

Judges’ 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.

Award: Stockland Sculpture Prize

Artwork Name: Those were the times

Artist: Linda Banazis

Judges’ 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.

Award: Highly Commended

Artwork Name: Havana Chic

Artist: Jenny Herbert

Judges’ 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.

Award: Local Artist Award

Artwork Name: Yellow Paint Brush

Artist: Kathryn Haug

Judges’ 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.

Award: Gerry Gauntlett Award

Artwork Name: A Rare Bird in the Lands

Artist: Eva Fernandez

Judges’ Comments: Sophisticated and technically strong, effective framing and use of dateable, decorative characteristic elements decorative. Reworking our understanding of an icon in the landscape. Staged reminiscent of Victorian era and presents a Contemporary reading of history. Darkness of colonial stories contained portrayed by the Black swan and our relationship with decorative arts.

Award: Stockland Sculpture Award

Artwork Name: Mute Figure #6 (Fading Out Even As It Focuses)

Artist: Paul Kaptein

Judges’ Comments: Interesting take on Self Portraiture – a cognizant of the developmental nature of an artist’s practice. Sombre – a death mask – yet playful, taking elements of portraiture from painting and sculpture and its display mechanisms and combines them. Discussion on contemporary art, blended mediums, falling apart of being constructed? Embraced loss of control and development of practice. Stretch of time/distortion.

Award: Local Artists

Artwork Name: Depression is

Artist: Catharine Willey

Judges’ Comments: Poignant and important subject matter, strong portrait highlighting a contemporary issue. Strong and forthright but empathetic. Arresting gaze highlights a universal but personal story. Sensitively handled.

Award: Highly Commended

Artwork Name: Topography

Artist: Susan Roux

Judges’ Comments: Brave use of composition, the work is contemplative yet varied and complex. As a process driven work the artist has a natural understanding of the materials and process being undertaken. Tension between calm tonal values versus the ruptured and torn material use. Macro/micro tension.

Award: 2017 Gerry Gauntlett Award

Artwork Name: This Discovering 2

Artist: Ruth de Vos

Award: 2017 Highly Commended Award

Artwork Name: Isabel le Catolica

Artist: Eva Fernandez

Award: 2017 Local Artist Award

Artwork Name: Lost Wor(l)ds

Artist: Annabel Haizer

Award: 2017 Stockland Sculpture Award

Artwork Name: Quidalip III

Artist: Britt Mikkelsen

Award: 2017 Metropolitan Redevelopment Acquisition Award

Artwork Name: Soaked

Artist: Carly Le Cerf

Award: 2016 Gerry Gauntlett Award

Artwork Name: Platero y Yo

Artist: Eva Fernandez

Award: 2016 Highly Commended Award

Artwork Name: Silent Departure

Artist: Sharleen King

Award: 2016 Local Artist Award

Artwork Name: Portscape

Artist: Kerrie Di Cataldo

Award: 2016 Metropolitan Redevelopment Acquisition Award

Artwork Name: Lost

Artist: Eric Hynynen

Award: 2016 Stockland Sculpture Award

Artwork Name: Indigo Scrolls

Artist: Trudi Pollard

Award: 2015 Gerry Gauntlett Award

Artwork Name: Lost My Way

Artist: Mark Tweedie

Judge’s Comments: “The application of paint portrayed simplicity and confidence which came across in rich luscious tones. The vulnerability of the subject captured feeling and empathy, as if you were intimate with the subject. Amongst all the artwork your piece felt like it belonged.”

Award: 2015 Highly Commended Award

Artwork Name: Kensington Op Shop

Artist: Lorraine Sutherland

Judge’s Comments: “While this year’s Art Awards had some attractive pieces, the Kensington Op Shop portrayed mystery and authenticity. It was a piece we kept coming back too.”

Award: 2015 Inaugural Local Artist Award

Artwork Name: Fold Girls 3D

Artist: Jill Smith

Judge’s Comments: “It was great to see Jill experiment with new technology and skill. The piece was innovative without being faddish.”

Award: 2015 Metropolitan Redevelopment Authority Award

Artwork Name: Habbittatted

Artist: Leesa Padget

Judge’s Comments: “Leesa’s artwork, whilst controversial, aligns with the MRA’s conservation strategy and will send a powerful message to all our Project Manager’s and Partners.”

Award: 2015 Stockland 3D Award

Artwork Name: My Friend Bongo

Artist: Daniel Fisher

Judge’s Comments: “My Friend Bongo is an inspirational artwork which Stockland believes we could use as public art within the residential developments of Armadale.”