Brett Whiteley Travelling Art Scholarship stays home thanks to COVID
Kangaroo Valley might not quite measure up to Paris - but the five winners of this year’s Brett Whiteley Travelling Art Scolarship are making the best of the situation.
NSW
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Five young artists were jointly awarded the Brett Whiteley Travelling Art Scholarship in Sydney on Wednesday, but the usual prize of a trip to Paris is off, thanks to the coronavirus.
The scholarship usually goes to just one winner, who gets to spend three months in a flat by the river Seine.
But this year the Art Gallery of NSW awarded five artists $10,000 each, plus two weeks in residence at the Shark Island Institute in the Kangaroo Valley. The institute supports documentary makers, performers and artists.
The five winners, all under 30 and from three states including NSW, are Charlie Ingemar Harding, Emily Grace Imeson, Dan Kyle, Lily Platts and Georgia Spain.
Wendy Whiteley, ex-wife of the artist for whom the scholarship is named, said this year’s prize “will be fantastic” because it’s all about artists forming friendships.
“Establishing friendships is important when you’re young,” Mrs Whiteley said at the Brett Whiteley Studio where Art Gallery of NSW director Michael Brand announced the winners.
Brett Whiteley won a travelling scholarship that took him and Wendy Whiteley overseas in 1959. But Wendy Whiteley said they lost many friendships because they moved around so much.
While at Shark Island Institute, the five winners will have day-long visits from this year’s guest judge Lucy Culliton and other artists including Ben Quilty and even the esteemed John Olsen.
Michael Brand and various AGNSW curators will also be on a roster to spend a day with the scholarship winners at the institute.
25-year-old Platts, who grew up on a Bombala farm and now lives in Canberra, said it was disappointing to miss out on Paris. “I mean, yes. Let’s be honest,” Platts said.
But she counted herself lucky to have the chance to work alongside some of Australia’s best painters.
Lucy Culliton, an Archibald Prize finalist this year, said the Shark Island Institute residency will be better than the city of light.
“Who’d want to go to stinky old Paris? I wouldn’t. Sorry,” Culliton said.
Ben Quilty, an AGNSW artist-trustee who won the Whiteley scholarship in 2002, agreed with Ms Whiteley that making friendships was vital for young artists.
“In a way I think this is going to be more beneficial than being on your own in Paris,” Quilty said. “For the first month [in Paris] you feel very isolated.”
Kyle said he was not upset about missing out on Paris. He said the scholarship was more exciting this year “because it can change five lives instead of one”.
Quilty believes this year’s scholarship could be a model for the prize’s future.
“I don’t know that Wendy [Whiteley] would agree to that, but I’d love to see this as something that keeps going,” Quilty said.
“I think there’s this notion that we have to leave [Australia] to tell the stories, as though our stories aren’t good enough. But the stories are right here.”
Velma “Aunty Val” Mulcahy, a Kangaroo Valley indigenous elder, will also visit the artists’ residency at Shark Island Institute. But Quilty is not going to suggest what her role should be.
“I’m going to leave it to her. No one tells Aunty Val what to do,” Quilty said.
The national scholarship is open to artists under 30, and Culliton selected 11 finalists from 129 applicants this year.
“I was looking for people who are showing me they wanted to go somewhere with their career,” Culliton said.
“All these guys had strong bodies of work. You could see they were workers.”
The work of all the finalists goes on view from tomorrow (15 October) until 15 November at the Brett Whiteley Studio in Surry Hills. The former T-shirt factory was Brett Whiteley’s last studio, the one he was using when he died in 1992.
Originally published as Brett Whiteley Travelling Art Scholarship stays home thanks to COVID