2011 PANEL OF JUDGES
The Art Unlimited Judges are highly regarded in their respective fields of expertise.
Hanging Art Judges:
Kent Buchanan
Kent Buchanan has been working in the arts for the past 13 years in a variety of roles. He is currently Curator of Western Plains Cultural Centre (WPCC) in Dubbo and is responsible for a range of curatorial projects relating to both the Dubbo Regional Gallery and Dubbo Regional Museum. Prior to this role, Kent was Education / Public Programs Officer at Dubbo Regional Gallery for seven years, during this time presenting a range of lectures and talks on many aspects of the visual arts. Kent holds a Bachelor of Arts (Fine Arts) from College of Fine Arts, UNSW and a Graduate Diploma of Education (Secondary) from Charles Sturt University. His curatorial projects include Telling Stories: the Picture books of Libby Gleeson, A Child’s Eyes: Van Sowerwine, Fresh Arts 08, and the forthcoming exhibitions William Lamson, Adaptation: Louise Hearman & Louise Weaver and Juan Ford.
Helen Harwood
Director & Curator of Fairview ArtSpace, Mudgee.
Textile & Paper/Book artist for the past 12 years.
During Helen’s cultural evolvement she has developed her own artistic techniques, taught those with an interest and ensured availability of opportunity for artists in all mediums to exhibit their work.
She has a keen interest in and knowledge of colour, texture and composition and is constantly surprised by the innovative use of these tools in artworks.
As director of the ArtSpace with an active involvement in Mudgee Arts (Mudgee Arts Council Inc.), Helen’s aims have been to:
- To assist in lifting the importance of cultural awareness of a community and allowing opportunities for the development of strategic plans to incorporate art in all forms in the region’s development.
- To enable communities to explore and express their cultural identities and to encourage communities to work together to develop and participate in cultural experiences.
- To build networks for regional artists
Helen believes that Art Unlimited supports all of these aims and is delighted to continue her relationship with the project. This year she is supporting the competition with an additional cash prize and the opportunity for exhibition space for a chosen artist.
Ceramics Judges:
Lyn Cole
In 2004, Lyn Cole dared to take on the challenge of establishing a new gallery in regional NSW in the ceramic-focused town of Gulgong. Today, Cudgegong Gallery is a thriving world-class exhibition space that has attracted exhibiting artists from across Australia and abroad, including some of the most respected figures in the ceramic art world. As a passionate advocate for the arts community and cultural tourism, Lyn established many initiatives during her seven years as Gallery Director to assist local artist collaboration and encourage community interaction with the artistic realm – from regular ‘Dining In the Gallery’ events to an Artist In Residence program that is fondly spoken about by students and high profile artists alike. Her strong belief that art should be an accessible and integral part of the community has seen Lyn happily volunteer significant time to local Council committees and tourism boards, including board positions with the local Chamber of Commerce, Arts OutWest and Regional Arts NSW. She is also a member of the International Academy of Ceramics in Geneva.
Mitsuo Shoji
Mitsuo Shoji is a Japanese-born internationally-renowned ceramicist who was trained at Kyoto University, Japan. He has lived in Sydney since 1978 and was a lecturer in ceramics at Sydney College of the Arts for 29 years. He retired in 2007 and is now Honorary Senior Lecturer.
Mitsuo has held over 40 solo exhibitions nationally and internationally. His most recent shows were at Cudgegong Gallery, Gulgong, NSW, in 2009 (Language Symbolism – Abstraction), and at the Japan Foundation Gallery, Sydney in 2010 (Between the Language and the Form), with the assistance of an Australia Council for the Arts grant. In early 2011 the Depot Gallery, Danks Street, Waterloo held an exhibition of his work.
Mitsuo has lectured on ceramics in the USA, France, UK, Spain, Japan, Czech Republic, Turkey and Lithuania and has been invited to symposia in more than 10 countries. He has been a member of the International Academy of Ceramics (IAC) since 1980.
Photography Judges:
Jude Morrell
Jude Morrell has had a love affair with photography since she was eleven and received her first Kodak camera. A career in photography followed, in areas as diverse as studio portrait photography and retouching, large-scale B&W aerial printing and film stills – as well as photography for book covers and magazines such as Oz Arts.
Jude studied Visual Arts and received her degree from Sydney College of the Arts. She has exhibited at The Performance Space, the Australian Centre for Photography, Penrith Regional Gallery and Piers 2/3 in Sydney.
She is currently teaching Digital Photography and Photoshop at TAFE Western, Dubbo campus.
Ruby Davies
Ruby Davies grew up beside the Darling River in western NSW. In an
attempt to understand the environmental destruction that she has witnessed, Davies has devoted much of her artistic practice to documenting the Darling River near Wilcannia.
After completing a degree in history and sociology (UNSW), she studied Visual Art at Sydney College of the Arts, (MVA 2005). Her dissertation, Contested Visions, Expansive Views, is a speculation on the colonialist history and the contemporary divisions in the landscape of the Darling River. For this project she used large kites to produce aerial photographs showing the river landscape and topography, the curves and arcs of natural forces and the straight lines of fencelines and highways.
In her previous work Darling/Baaka (2000) Ruby explored pinhole cameras, making B&W images during very dry times and the 1998 flood. With a wide-angle viewpoint and a curved film plane, the images appear to envelop the viewer. Her recent series, Water Divining, concentrates on the changing shadows and colours on the surface of the water as a way to imagine a wider view of the earth as part of a larger planetary system. This series was exhibited at UTS gallery in 2010.
Ruby Davies was winner of the Energy Australia National Trust Heritage Award (2001) and a finalist in the National Photographic Portrait Prize (2007), The Moran Prize (2007), Fishers Ghost Art Award (2006), and the Head On Portrait Prize(2007). Exhibitions include, Origin at Podspace Gallery Newcastle (2008); Inland Sea, Vantage and Expanse at Wagga Wagga Regional Gallery (2007); Darling /Baakaat at RMIT (2001), Stills Gallery (2000), The Mildura Arts Centre (2003), The Dubbo Regional Art Gallery (2002), the Broken Hill Regional Gallery (2000) and Goolwa Regional Art Gallery in (2006). She is represented in the collections of the National Gallery of Australia, the State Library of NSW and St Vincent’s Hospital.