9 December 2022 – 26 February 2023
The winners of the 32nd Postcard Show at Linden New Art for 2022-23 have been announced.
This year, the entries came from over 400 artists around Australia, with each artist allowed up to three entries. To be eligible, all artworks have to be no larger than 8 by 10 inches and be able to be hung on the wall. The Postcard Show received works in every medium – oil, acrylic, watercolour, gouache, charcoal, graphite, photography, textiles, ceramics, glass, collage, prints, wooden sculptures, found object assemblages, and more. To represent this variety there are fourteen different awards which further adds to the democratic nature of the exhibition.
Linden’s CEO and Director, Vincent Alessi said, “The Postcard Show is defined by its egalitarian nature. Anyone can enter with the only limitations being the size of the work and its ability to be hung on a wall. It is an exhibition that truly celebrates the artist in all of us. This year we have received over 800 entries that explore different themes and genres and range from drawings, paintings, collages and dioramas. We are not awarding simply one prize for the best work in the exhibition. Instead, we are able to highlight different artists, with an award for local and Indigenous artists for example, as well as awards that focus on specific genres, including abstractionism, portraiture and landscape.
The Linden Postcard Show is an iconic exhibition, and we are excited to present so many diverse and compelling works side by side throughout the gallery.”
The Abstract Encouragement Award and Clothesline Award: Best Domestic Space went to Aylsa McHugh for Requiem for Straus. Printed on aluminium, this piece shows large hands in position as if ready to play piano with an architectural abstract background. The piece Is in black and white, leaving even more to the imagination. McHugh graduated in 2002 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Sculpture from the Victorian College of the Arts and now has had her work exhibited in Melbourne, Sydney, Pert, London and Japan. McHugh is interested in re-contextualising and combining found imagery can lend itself to ambiguous interpretations.
Winning The Henry: Best Abstract Award was Di Quick with Floods (right). This piece shows a birds-eye landscape created with twigwood and acrylic on a wood panel. Quick studied sculpture and paint at SA School of Art and printmaking at East Sydney Tech. She is currently working with wood to create a textural surface prior to painting. Last year, Quick was awarded Best Landscape in Show for her work, Hiking Larapinta II.
The Artist Encouragement Award went to Carolina Arsenii for her piece Unknown Object #3 made with mixed media on board. Playing with dark blues and deep reds, the piece shows a rock and shell scattered ground with a figure holding a wrench standing over the abstract ground. Arsenii is a multidisciplinary artist living and working in Melbourne. She makes videos, paintings and sculptures exploring absurdist themes, the relationship between order and chaos and the use of systems to organise information.
Susan Mountford won the Art Meets Science Award with Solution for Shifting Demand, which is made with graphite on Stonehenge paper. Mountford also took home Best Work on Paper with her piece Aid to Simplified Ordering, also using graphite on Stonehenge paper. After only graduating from the Victorian College of the Arts, Mountford is seemingly on a steady path to success in the industry.
The Best Landscape in Show went to Lana Daubermann for Hometime, made with oil on canvas. The piece portrays a sun set at the end of a dark suburban street with blue sky peeking through grey clouds. Daubermann is a Melbourne-based artist originally from Western Australia. She is a resident artist at Pentridge Studios in Coburg and currently focussing on connection to ‘space and light between’. Daubermann said, ‘This includes an ongoing exploration of negative space in both my still life and landscape work, plus the light between day and night…twilight.’
Lee-Ann Orton won the Best of St Kilda for her piece I brought my first baby home to this AirBnb and it never quite looked like this again (right). The piece shows a modern apartment with a fiddle leaf fig in the forefront and an almost scrapbook like fee, where certain elements stick out more than others. There are pops of vibrant colour drawing attention as well.
Best Photographic Work went to Kirsten Bresciani for Urban Tree 3. It is an archival inkjet print of an image of a tree with a background comprised of a wall where one half is black and one half is bright blue, with black lines almost mimicking the movement of the tree’s branches. Bresciani was born in Brisbane, and her camera has been her companion since the young age of nine. She trained as a photographer at the Queensland College of Art and went to work in commercial photography in Brisbane, London and now Melbourne. She is drawn to a varying range of subjects such as architecture, flowers, plants and seascapes to name a few.
Winning the Old Award was Susan Morris for Picante. The oil on canvas piece portrays an empty Perelló can housing a succulent plant in front of a plain background. This was one of three pieces that Morris submitted. Morris also won Best Still Life in Show and last year’s Postcard Show at Linden.
New Award went to two artists, Katharine Symons and Anthony Breach. Breach’s piece, Bruising, shows vertical wooden lines spaced evenly apart with varying degrees of angles.
Symons’ piece, Untitled, shows a weaved piece with green hues. Symons explores the use of natural remnants and fibres, constructing sculptures that repurpose materials found in our own backyard in order to create something wholly new.
Best Portrait in Show went to Paul Quick for Self Portrait. The piece shows a very abstract version of Quick on a green background. Quick is an emerging artist working with pastel, acrylic, ink, and paint pen. His practice has similar qualities to neo-expressionism in the seemingly rough handling of materials, resulting in expressive mark-making.
Proxima Centauri by Andrew Tan won the Skyline Award: Best Urban Space. The photograph is printed on aluminium composite panel. Tan is a photographer currently based in Melbourne. He is self-taught and his photography reflects his diverse interests, including wandering through cities exploring their architecture and urban spaces documenting his own unique perspective. Tans recent works have focussed on the contemporary urban landscape with an emphasis on textures, shapes, colours, and patterns.
The First Nations Award went to Leslie Stanley for Echidna (right). Stanley portrays the echidna in a colourful and bright manner, straying from the ordinary colouring of the mammal.
As an open-entry art prize, the Linden Postcard show continues to support living artists by presenting and selling their work, as well as acknowledging their wonderfully diverse and inspiring practices. Over the years the exhibition has been a stepping stone for many practising artists to be seen, recognised and introduced to greater opportunities.
This year’s judges were Victor Griss, Curator at Counihan Gallery, Crystal Stubbs, Director at East Gippsland Art Gallery, and Anna Hoyle, artist and a previous award winner.
Linden Postcard Show 2022-2023
Exhibition dates:
10 December 2022 – 26 February 2023
26 Acland Street, St Kilda
https://www.lindenarts.org/exhibitions/linden-new-art/linden-postcard-show-2022-23/
