How art made Stella-prize winning author Heather Rose a better writer

Heather Rose last night won the $50,000 Stella Prize for her novel The Museum of Modern Love.

Stella Prize-winning Tasmanian author Heather Rose on the beach at Kingston, near Hobart. Picture: Peter Mathew

Anyone who thinks art is easy should talk to writer Heather Rose, who last night won the $50,000 Stella Prize for her novel The Museum of Modern Love.

The immovable centre of the book is Serbian artist Marina Abramovic, who made headlines with a 2010 exhibition at New York’s Museum of Modern Art where she sat in silence and let people look at her, for 72 days. Rose planned, for what was to be her seventh book, to create a fictional incarnation of such an artist, but then she went to New York, attended the show, The Artist is Present, and came face-to-face with Abramovic.

“It was nerve-wracking enough when I first started the book as I didn’t have any reference points as to who she must be. I had only my imagination,” Rose told The Australian. “But sitting with her in 2010 I began to understand the depth and power of her work, and that what people took from her art was much bigger than her personal life. I had to be a better writer to tell the story.”

The result? The novel took 11 years to write. The initial plan would have led to “a much easier novel … I would have churned it out in three years.” But the change of strategy has led to a prize the author, who has won awards in the past, considers ­career-defining.

“I have never won a prize ­attached to prizemoney,” she said with a laugh. “But more than that, the Stella has captured a place in our cultural landscape. It is a beautiful recognition of women’s writing in Australia, something that was under-recognised.”

The Stella, now in its fifth year, was founded partly in response to a male domination of the Miles Franklin Award.

Named after Stella Maria Sarah Miles Franklin, who as a writer dropped her first three names to avoid gender identification, the Stella is open only to female writers.

The chair of the judging panel, author Brenda Walker, said Rose’s novel was a “meditation on the social, spiritual and artistic importance of seeing and being seen … a dazzling exploration of the importance of art in everyday life”.

Tasmanian writer Rose received Abramovic’s carte blanche permission to put her in the novel, but she stresses that the character is made up in an emotional sense.

“Thoughts I have attributed to the character do not mean it’s a true reflection of how the real Marina Abramovic thinks or feels. Every novel comes with its challenges, and here there is a delicate balance between fact and fiction.”

The artist has now read the book. “She loved it. What a relief,” Rose said. Rose prevailed over a strong shortlist that, in a sad note, included two writers who died last year: Cory Taylor for her memoir Dying and Georgia Blain for her novel Between a Wolf and a Dog. The other contenders were Maxine Beneba Clarke for her racial memoir The Hate Race, Catherine de Saint Phalle for her family bio­graphy Poum and Alexandre and Emily Maguire for her novel An Isolated Incident.

And while Abramovic is the core of Rose’s novel, the real emotions are felt by the fictional characters, who deal with life, death, loss and grief. The short-listed books have similarities that are relevant amid the political and social uncertainty of our times.

“It has never been more urgent that we express our creativity,” Rose said. “It reminds us that we have a sense of purpose.”