Macquarie Group Emerging Artist Prize

Katie Banakh

This painting is by Katie Banakh, an artist whose practice was affected by the solitude and geographic limitations of an extended lockdown in Melbourne during the pandemic. While the eerie mood and lighting is reminiscent of Edward Hopper’s urban scenes, it actually depicts a still from the Survivor television show, which the artist binge-watched because she missed being able to get beyond the 5km radius of her suburb and into nature.

@thiscuriousplace
katiebanakh.com

Katie Banakh
Lockdown Landscape, 2020
oil on canvas board
41 x 30 cm
$A1,200 (Acquired by the Macquarie Group Collection)

This piece has been sold. Contact Katie Banakh to learn more about her art.

Victoria Hempstead

Many artists were compelled this year to capture the environmental and emotional devastation of last summer’s bushfires. Sydney artist Victoria Hempstead felt an urgent need to record the aftermath, which she researched first-hand by walking around different fire-affected sites over a five-month period. The result is these very raw, abstract compositions made from a natural solution poured over mild steel that causes corrosion to occur, invoking how fire impacts the bush.

@victoriahempstead
victoriahempstead.com

Victoria Hempstead
Blue Gum (Eucalyptus Globulus), 2020
mild steel, water (evaporated), salt, resin
120 x 120 cm
$A5,500 (SOLD)

This piece has been sold. Contact Victoria Hempstead to learn more about her art.

Victoria Hempstead
Red Stringybark II (Eucalyptus Macrorhyncha), 2020
mild steel, water (evaporated), salt, resin
64.5 x 120 cm
$A3,000 (SOLD)

This piece has been sold. Contact Victoria Hempstead to learn more about her art.

Victoria Hempstead
Old Man Banksia II (Banksia Serrata), 2020
mild steel, water (evaporated), salt, resin
70 x 50 cm
$A1,800 (Acquired by The Macquarie Group Collection)

This piece has been sold. Contact Victoria Hempstead to learn more about her art.

Victoria Hempstead
River Red Gum III (Eucalyptus Camaldulensis), 2020
mild steel, water (evaporated), salt, resin
120 x 120 cm  
$A5,500 (SOLD)

This piece has been sold. Contact Victoria Hempstead to learn more about her art.

Mahala Hill

Mahala Hill’s jewel-like sculptures speculate on the resilience of nature in the face of the post-human wasteland that threatens to define a future Planet Earth. The Canberra trained artist wonders who and what will colonise the landscape in the aftermath of human habitation, and likens the apparent spontaneity of these “spectral growths” to her experimentation with the technical limits of ceramic making.

@Mahala_M_Hill
mahalahillceramics.com

Emma Itzstein

The Moonah trees of Victoria’s Coastal Moonah Woodland, some of which are over 300 years old, are endangered and protected. Geelong-based artist Emma Itzstein created this work in early 2020, just as the Covid-19 health crisis was emerging in Australia. It is the first in her Moonah series and is centred on the idea of slowing down and escaping the busyness of everyday life by reconnecting with nature.

@emmaitzstein
emmaitzstein.com

George Kennedy

Balfour is an abandoned mining town, isolated deep within the forests of north western Tasmania. Hobart artist George Kennedy is fascinated by the decaying and disappearing traces of human activity around the mine site, where he spends time alone, making countless preparatory sketches. These resulting images aim to capture the process of erasure, as evidence of past lives is gradually swallowed up by nature.

@george.kennedy

Katie Stewart

NSW artist Katie Stewart has a close affinity with the sea. She is an avid surfer but, like marine scientists around the world, fears for the future health of our oceans. Focussing on fishing in this series of paintings – which summon nostalgia for simpler times – the artist reflects on how we have for generations depended on nature for sustenance, and how this must change if the human race is to survive.

@ktstewee
@katiebarbarieart

Joanne Napangardi Wheeler

Joanne Napangardi Wheeler is a Central Australian artist from Ntaria, also known as Hermannsburg. Her family is from the Western and Central Desert lands, and it is stories from these places that she mostly paints. Unlike her famous great-grandfather Albert Namatjira, the artist has a distinctively Aboriginal painting style and takes as her subject matter the traditions of Australia’s First Nations’ people, especially the hunting, gathering, cooking and eating of bush tucker.

@tangentyereartists
towncampdesigns.org.au

Myles Young 

These paintings are of fictional places collaged together from memory and observation. Artist Myles Young is struck by the uniquely bright colours, intense sunlight and diverse natural forms of the Australian landscape. Each painting is conceived as an amalgamated 24-hour view of a vaguely recognisable place, with each mark representing the movement of animals, snakes and insects, and changes in light and wind direction.

@myles.paint
mylesyoung.com.au