I am just coming to the end of a hectic few months of family shoots. I think I have enjoyed these as much as as I ever had probably because its coincided with the slow recovery of my knee and its quite joyful to be able to get around and actually work easily again. It has been kind of hard to put the 'art' hat on though and start thinking of the coming years 'schedule'.
With the deadline for the Emma Hack art prize looming I set about taking the theme 'humanity in nature' a step further because pretty much all my work would qualify. You would think that would have made my choice easier but it didn't. As always I like to keep anything I enter, particularly for awards, very fresh. I often enter images that have been shot the week before the deadline and sometimes the day before. So naturally I started sifting through my latest work to see what I could develop in the week preceding the deadline. This made for a highly stressful and frustrating week of trying to rush the unrushable (not a word actually according to google). The other thing you always have to weigh up is that you have 1 year to enter images into most of these competitions and that new work has a longer lifespan.
I did a shoot on the Wednesday (deadline Friday) and started to edit it. It was finished on Thursday but I needed to print it out to check it before entering. Im pretty sure that mercury was retrograde that week. I had computers crashing, photoshop playing up, and naturally when I went to print the hot favourite, I ran out of magenta ink!. At this point I thought that in order to cut down on a bit of artistic stress I would pick the most obvious choice from the 'Entangled' series and put in the entry and then take the pressure off the new one. I entered the image I liked the most for the theme and then headed out to Graphic Arts Supplies to get some ink. When I got back I printed the new one up and checked it and then proceeded to try and enter it as well.
I should have read the rules first....one entry only!
3 days later I was notified that 'Entangled' is a 2015 finalist. At the end of the day fate made the right choice and I think I will be running with the theme of 'humanity in nature' or the like for SALA this year because I have a lot of material now!
This means that she will be exhibited in the Adelaide Convention Centre from March 11th until the end of the Fringe. Its an amazing exhibition venue with fabulous exposure and I'm very happy that I'll be being represented this year by that particular image. I'll also be in the running for the Prize of $5000 and the peoples choice award of $2000 so if you get a chance your vote would be hugely appreciated....
Here is 'Entangled'....there is nothing like seeing her live in print along with the wide array of beautiful artwork from all different mediums that have been chosen as finalists. Congrats to my fellow photographer friends Danae Thyssen, Ben Lieu, and the very clever Alex Frayne who will be hanging alongside her.
Thankyou to Montana Birt (model) and Grier Neilson (MUA)
Taken during my 2014 fine art workshop in Adelaide
