This is Shan Turner-Carroll’s entry “I love You’’ which has taken out the $50,000 open category prize at this year’s Fisher’s Ghost art award.
The entry is from the artist’s Bless You, Bless Me, Bless the Mountain series.
The winning artwork emerges from Turner-Carroll’s ongoing interest in the relationship between prayer and art making.
“I am drawn to the possibility of framing sculpture not as representation, but as prayer itself, a materialised act of love, urgency, resistance, and surrender,’’ says the artist.
Consisting of straw, plaster and photographic elements, the work is described by Turner-Carroll as “not illustrations of belief but embodied gestures’’ and “prayers made with the body, through the hands, in real time.
“Familiar materials are repurposed in unfamiliar ways. They hold the residue of domestic life, play, shelter, labour, and ritual.’’
Award judges Kuba Dorabialski, Jasmine Kean, and Laura McBrideoffered this on the winning entry:
“I love You acts as a love letter, where the words are expressed through ritualistic forms.
“Shan is a worthy recipient of the Fisher’s Ghost Art Award, recognised for his courage in experimentation with medium, pushing the viewer to consider the interactions presented within a post-performance framework,’’ the judges said.
“The strength of this year’s Fisher’s Ghost art award lies in the breadth and quality of work across the exhibition.
“The finalists represent a remarkable diversity of artistic practices, ideas and perspectives, and the standard across all categories made the judging particularly challenging.
“The awarded works are exceptional, but they also sit within an exhibition that speaks to the depth and strength of contemporary art practice across Australia.
“Shan Turner-Carroll’s work stands out in particular as a work representing all that is profound in visual arts practice; an intimate familiarity with material and form, a readiness to surprise, an emotional vulnerability and most strikingly, the ability to push beyond what can be expressed through language alone.’’
Other winners included Kelcie Bryant-Duguid, Day 529. Mother and Child (contemporary), Stu Doherty, Lays down with Eels (traditional), and Jessica Taylor, Winter in Blackheath (Macarthur award).
