Art world outsider lands Gallipoli Prize
Luke Cornish has taken out the $20,000 prize with The Pity of War, a contemporary reimagining of Michelangelo’s La Pieta.
When Canberra stencil artist Luke Cornish (E.L.K.) got the call that he had won this year’s Gallipoli Art Prize, his first thought was that he was being chased up for forgetting to pay the application fee. “It took me by surprise,“ he tells The Australian over the phone. “I’m not used to winning art prizes.”
The 45-year-old artist, who is self taught, admits that he has always felt like an art world outsider. “I’m kind of like a cat that scratches at the door, asking to be let in to the art world. And every couple of years, the door is opened, and I’m like, ‘F..k this, I’m an outside cat’.”
Outside cat he may be, Cornish’s painting, The Pity of War, touched something in the Gallipoli Art Prize judging panel. The 122cm x 91cm work, which fuses aerosol and acrylic on canvas, is a contemporary reimagining of Michelangelo’s La Pieta.
Cornish says that this was his attempt to coney the intergenerational trauma of war. “The people that are left behind... For every soldier that’s died, there’s a mother that’s lost a son.
“It’s important to remember sacrifices made by the people that came before us so we don’t fall into that trap again.”
The significance of winning the $20,000 prize, which is awarded by the Gallipoli Club to artworks that honour the Anzac spirit, extends beyond monetary value for Cornish. With a great-grandfather who served as an Anzac, the victory is “hugely sentimental.”
“It means so much more than it would to win any other award.”
What was it about pity, as an emotion, that he was interested in exploring in his prize-winning painting? “Things are just a pity,” he says, admitting that he’s “glued” to the “24/7 news cycle.” “It’s a pity because you see this [expletive] on the TV every day. Can we just not?”
Growing up in Canberra, Cornish worked as a sign writer and labourer before taking up stencil art in the early-2000s.
In 2012, he became the first street artist to be selected as a finalist for the prestigious Archibald Prize with his portrait of Father Bob McGuire. Subsequently, he earned finalist honours twice more, including this year.
Cornish says that war has been a recurring theme in his work since “day one,” but he doesn’t quite know why. “Maybe it’s a fear, a fear of mutually assured destruction. I don’t know,” he says.
In early 2017, Cornish co-founded the charity organisation For Syria’s Children, a fundraising project where street artists from all over Australia donated artwork to raise financial aid for war-torn Syrian orphanages, medical facilities, and schools. He says that we need art during wartime because, “It’s the whole point of life.”
“Imagine a world without art. No books, no TVs, no painting, no cinema, no theatre. It’s the fabric of being alive. It’d be pretty boring without it,” he says, adding, “It’s escapism, really, from the trauma of being alive. It’s diversional therapy.”
The 2024 Gallipoli Art Prize judges also highly commended fellow Canberran Kate Stevens for her work Witness,’ a portrait of Dusty Miller, whistleblower and former combat medic who served with Australia’s Special Forces in Afghanistan and who gave testimony to the IGADF Afghanistan war crimes inquiry.
The 2024 Gallipoli Art Prize will be on exhibition at 6-8 Atherden Street, The Rocks, Sydney from 18 April to 12 May, 2024.
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