Tracey Cockburn wins City of Hobart Art Prize 06
Sunday, August 20th, 2006
Tracey Cockburn
Amidst the trappings of politics and art and against strong competition from many of Australias top printmakers HIP stalwart and founding committee member Tracey Cockburn was announced on Friday as the winner of this years City of Hobart Art Prize for printmaking.The judges of this prestigious competition were Roger Butler, Senior Curator, Prints and Drawings, National Gallery of Australia; Patricia Anderson, art critic and writer for The Australian newspaper and, Craig Judd, Senior Curator of Art, Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery
Craig Judd writes, “The artist has developed a technique involving the application of patterns onto a clear plastic ground. The patterns are derived from nineteenth century shards of domestic pottery wares. Oscillating across history and verging almost into science fiction, the judges were impressed by the way Cockburn has re-translated the notions that surround our attraction to the fragment…the glossy and lustrous base material creates astounding depth of colour and delivers new life to the original found forms”
Unreliable Evidence
As Tracey says, “In these works it is the idea of the fragment that is paramount - the fragment as representative of a lost and, through a process of representation, a possible recoverable past…representative of lives lived and the daily existence of those who might have resided there”
The Judges’ Commendation for printmaking went to Rebecca Stevens, another Tasmanian artist who’s practice, ‘…involves drawn recordings and studies of particular locations and structures.” Bec’s work consists, in part, of etched images transferred onto cast plaster surfaces.
The exhibition is on at The Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery until September 21. This is a great exhibition of comtemporary printmaking and jewellery and should not be missed by anyone interested in what is happening in these mediums in Australia today.
