Bush Inspires Winning Artist
Illawarra Mercury
Wednesday March 12, 2008
A SELF-PORTRAIT by Sydney-based artist Fiona Lowry, naked and alone in NSW's notorious Belanglo State Forest, is this year's winner of the $100,000 Doug Moran National Portrait Prize.
Lowry, 34, won the coveted award, now in its 20th year, for her acrylic on archival paper, titled What I Assume You Shall Assume. The first-time entrant said the work was part of a series she is working on which draws on the colonial mythology of the Australian bush as strange and malevolent. In her winning portrait, Lowry depicts herself naked in the Belanglo State Forest in the Southern Highlands, where serial killer Ivan Milat left the bodies of his seven victims. "I'm interested in exploring that kind of paranoia that sits within the landscape, specifically Belanglo State Forest where you can't drive past it without feeling something of the event," Lowry said. "I'm interested in how that is transpired to you the viewer, and how you can give them a sense of that space as well." Fellow Sydney artist Belinda Mason was yesterday named the winner of the nation's biggest portrait photo award, the $50,000 Moran Contemporary Photographic Prize. Mason's confronting work, titled Four Generations, digitally blends four nude photographs of herself, her young son Dieter, her mother, Barbara and her 101-year-old grandmother Bonnie. Mason said the photograph showing a physical bond was meant to reflect the unbreakable emotional bond between the family members. "It's a complete tie between us all, we are all born in the same century," she said.
© 2008 Illawarra Mercury
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