News

Helen Pynor selected as winner of the RBS Emerging Artist Award 2009 in Australia

20 October 2009

Sydney, 20 October 2009

The Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) in Australia today announced Helen Pynor as the winner of the RBS Emerging Artist Award 2009 for her photographic work Milk. Pynor’s work of three panels - tea tree, bird’s nest farm, wattle - was chosen from this year’s exhibitions which displayed over 50 works and a broad range of media.

Pynor will receive an acquisitive prize of $15,000, her work forming part of the RBS Australia corporate art collection. In addition, Pynor will be granted an international development programme and an around-the- world airline ticket.

This year’s judging panel comprised Edmond Capon (Director of the Art Gallery of NSW), Glenn Barkley (The Museum of Contemporary Art Curator) Ben Quilty (Leading Australian painter and Archibald Finalist) and RBS Executives Simon Perrott and Peter Young AM.

On presenting the Award, Young expressed his sincere thanks to the artists, representative galleries and judges who contributed to this year’s Award.

“This year’s Award has again been one of high quality and we want to thank everyone involved for making it another success,” he said. Of Pynor, Young added “It is excellent to see an artist that has been creating works for a number of years receive the Award. It will add a new perspective to our existing portfolio of gifted artists in the RBS corporate art collection.”

In describing Milk Capon said “There is something intriguing about the work; you get a sense of mystery, as though there is something organic in the way the images evolved – they seem to represent a sense of evolution.” Quilty described the work as “magical and beautiful” and added “it’s a white artist delving into the indigenous heritage of the country.” Barkely agreed “It’s good she has worked in collaboration with the indigenous community for her work.”

The judges also commended the Kristel Britcher’s Spacial Composition IV, a blown glass, wheel cut work.

The RBS Employee’s Choice Award went to Victoria Reichelt for her oil on linen work, Spectrum 2009. Reichelt wins $2,000 and an around-the-world airline ticket.

The work of all finalists will be on public view in the RBS Tower foyer, 88 Phillip Street, Sydney, until 30 October.

Notes to Editors:

About the winner - RBS Emerging Artist Award 2009
Helen Pynor
Milk (tea tree, bird’s nest fern, wattle) Edition 1/3 2009, C-type photographic print, face-mounted on glass

“This work takes as its starting point the plant medicinal remedies of the Dharawal people of the southern Sydney and Illawara region. Beginning with an exploration of the intricate relationships of dependence and mutuality that develop between people and their biophysical milieus, the work opens out into a baroque unfurling in which familiar spatial and somatic perception are destabilised. The spilling fluids in these images refer to, amongst other things, the fluids of bodies - blood, digestive juices, mucus, milk. Despite their grounding in the concreteness of the body's vulnerabilities and indiscretions, the images unfold in some other-worldly time and place, calling up for me broader themes of religiosity, Indigenous inhabitation and dispossession, and the violences of history. Underneath these associations is a response based more in the world of sensation, of the work's softness and liquidity, the fluid cocooning of these young, denuded plants, floating, sinking, levitating or flying across space.”

Helen Pynor wishes to thank the Dharawal Elders and people, and John Lennis, for information on Dharawal medicinal practices used in the Milk project.


About the winner – RBS Employee’s Choice Award 2009
Victoria Reichelt
Spectrum, 2009, oil on linen
Previously in my practice, I have made 'portraits' of Australian artists by painting photographs of their bookshelves, in which the book spines and what these objects represented was paramount. These works served to reveal something of the 'sitter's' inspirations and motivations through the careful selection and representation of the titles in their bookshelves. As paintings they were all about the detail of the book spines, the titles and what the depiction of these objects represented. In my current works I am furthering my investigations into books as objects, by examining how they function differently when used in very different contexts.
In this work, Spectrum, I am attempting this by making a bookshelf painting that forms a straightforward colour spectrum. These recent colour spectrum paintings have the appearance of Minimalist works from a distance, yet function as more literal 'realist paintings' when viewed close up, playing with the detailed nature of the objects as they contrast with the sparse vocabulary of Minimalism. The books are a disparate group connected only by their spine colours and the mention of colours in their titles. Using them in this way echoes Minimalist concerns of form over content, whereby the books are stripped of their literary significance and reduced simply to colours.

About The RBS Emerging Artist Award:
The RBS Emerging Artist Award (formally the ABN AMRO Emerging Artist Award), now in its sixth year, is one of the largest corporate exhibitions of emerging contemporary art in Australia. The Award was founded by RBS Senior Advisor Peter Young as a way of creating an active relationship between the business and art communities while providing valuable exposure to talented artists who are in the early stages of their careers. Artists are selected on the basis that they reside in Australia, do not consistently sell their work for more than $10,000 and whose work is engaging on a conceptual and aesthetic level. Represented and
unrepresented artists were invited to submit one artwork produced during 2008/09.


Media Enquiries:
Jill Valentine, Head of Marketing & Communication, RBS Australia
Telephone: 02 8259 5244 or Email: jill.valentine@rbs.com