wotwedid

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Recently we were part of the judging team for the 2023 Mullins Conceptual Photography Prize (MCPP) which is coordinated by the Australian Photographic Society. The Award is acquisitive and is offered nationally with a value of $25,000. The Mullins Prize seeks to find Australia’s best conceptual photographic works where the means of work presentation are unrestricted, inviting photographers to illustrate the intent of their works through a myriad of mediums. The finalists are exhibited and judged at the Muswellbrook Regional Arts Centre.

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Eloise Maree announces the winner

 It’s been a pleasure and a privilege judging the 2023 Mullins Conceptual Photography Prize here at Muswellbrook Regional Arts Centre, on Wanaruah Land. I’ve really enjoyed observing the ways in which the works dialogue with one another, as well as the dialogue they bring about in their observers.

I am pleased to announce that CHRIS BOWES is the WINNER of the 2023 MCPP with his work SUN KISSED #1–4. The fact that Chris Bowes has two works within this finalists exhibition is a testament, I feel, to the strength of his artistry.

Sun Kissed #1-4 is concurrently simple – coloured film imprinted with light as the sun rises and sets – and complex – non-representational landscapes, at once simulacras and originals, motion and stasis, photography and meteorology. Congratulations on beautifully distilling and expanding the definition of landscape photography.

Chris Bowes is a multi-disciplinary artist based in Naarm (Melbourne), on the unceded lands of the Kulin nation. Bowes is a first time MCPP finalist and receives the 2023 MCPP $25,000 cash Prize.

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Chris Bowes Sunkissed #1–4

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ARTISTS STATEMENT: “Sun Kissed” is a series of experimental photographs created using a hand-made camera that, rather than capturing a representational image, instead captures the colour of light. They are presented in pairs, each pair containing an imprint of the light at sunrise and sunset over the course of several days. As such, the work’s aim is to reduce landscape photography to its most basic form, imbuing photographic film with an impression of the sun rather than capturing it washing over the environment.

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Roger Skinner with the Adjudicators

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COMMENTS ON THE ADJUDICATION BY JUDGE LEN METCALF

The 2023 Mullins Conceptual Photography Prize is an incredible and important exhibition. It shines as the leading art photography prize, and as such is a showcase of what photography can be.   That is the point of it isn’t it?  To question what photography is, to push the boundaries into new areas, to test assumptions and explore the photographic visual medium beyond its established boundaries.  The resulting exhibition does this exceptionally well.

This visually stimulating, emotionally charged and intellectually challenging exhibition is the culmination of a long judiciary process.  Firstly 450 entries are digitally catalogued and the adjudicators, Eloise Maree, Victoria Cooper, Doug Spowart and myself (Len Metcalf) carefully start examining each entry.  We carefully considered each of the artworks, the multiple images that accompanied many of the works, sizes, the titles, and the artists statements.  From here we all picked a selection to be a finalist and to be exhibited.  Interestingly, there was only one overlapping artwork, a testament to the diversity in background and aesthetics of the panel, but most importantly to the diversity and quality of the entries.

Thirty artworks were bought together for the exhibition at Muswellbrook Regional Arts Centre, an interesting and stimulating mix of work.  As we wandered around the exhibition the quality and the breadth was overwhelming.  As was the daunting task of choosing only one winner.  I joked that we could randomly choose a winner and argue how deserving it would be.

Adjudicators deliberating

The adjudication panel, over the better part of a day, wandered around and discussed every artwork in depth. Examining in detail, considering the artwork in front of us as it was presented.  It was mentally exhausting and incredibly rewarding.

When we came together, reflecting on all of those conversations, there had been one artwork where all the judges glowed as we hovered around it, the conversation was stimulating and illuminating inspired by the artwork.  A quick check with all the judges and the decision was unanimous.

The judges agreed to each choose their own to add four additional highly commended awards.

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ABOUT THE HIGHLY COMMENDED AWARDS

Judith Nangala Crispin’s A flying saucer over Clyde Mountain, shows Declan, dead at two hours old, how to make a new body out of light

Judith Nangala Crispin  A flying saucer over Clyde Mountain, shows Declan, dead at two hours old, how to make a new body out of light

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Doug Spowart comments on Judith Nagala Crispin’s Highly Commended work

The very name of this prize ‘Conceptual Photography’ demanded of me to seek out works that went beyond the reality of normal visual captures and that dealt with and idea transferred to a photographic outcome. Though Crispin’s work is firmly embedded in a range of photography and, perhaps even pre-photography techniques what excites me is the caring and poetic narratives she creates that connect the death of the animal recorded and its spiritual resurrection.

ARTISTS STATEMENT: This is part of a series of afterlife portraits of birds and animals, ascending between earth and outer space. I place cadavers on emulsion, creating images with a Lumachrome glass printing sun printing, cliché-verre and chemigram. Decomposition chemistry creates colour and detail. Each print is exposed 30–50 hours in natural light. This work draws on my experience of tracing my family’s Aboriginal ancestry. I am trying to honour the lives of animal and birds with whom we share this planet.

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Arrayah Loynd’s I don’t always understand/selectively mute (diptych)

Arrayah Loynd I don’t always understand/selectively mute (diptych)

Victoria Cooper comments on Arrayah Loynd’s work

This work is hard to walk past but equally hard to look at. The artist’s statement and title resonates with the images. Loynd embedded concepts of identity, crisis and trauma in the layers of this deeply confronting work.

ARTISTS STATEMENT: I don’t feel like I belong in my body, it feels awkward and uncomfortable like an ill fitting suit. I live in a constant state of confusion…of others, of myself. I am not who they say I am, I am not who you think I am. I am no one and nothing, I am everyone and everything, So come and find me, but only in the small moments when I want to be found. I make no promise that I will be there.   (neurodivergence/trauma)

Melanie Cobram’s The Colony Reclaims the Land

Eloise Maree comments on Melanie Cobram’s The Colony Reclaims the Land

Within this work, Melanie’s photographically ‘captured’ landscapes are terrorised and territorialised by a colony of termites (I’d be curious to know if the termites were a native or introduced species). I really enjoy the way the termites’ interventions extend beyond the photographic negatives to the matboard, just as this photoseries extends discussions on migration, citizenship and belonging beyond the usual frames of reference. Congratulations on creating such a thought-provoking work, Melanie.

ARTISTS STATEMENT: The Colony Reclaims the Land is a series of 35mm negatives depicting the Australian landscape, intervened by a colony of termites. The negatives were fed into a termite mound and crossed over by the colony as it travelled assiduously across the nest. The work plays with the dialogue of living on colonised land by inviting a native colony to reclaim its own image. The termites’ subtle topographical drawings reconcile landscape and language, eliciting conversations about migration, citizenship and belonging.

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Jess Leonard’s I knew at the Time

Len Metcalf’s comments on Jess Leonard’s I knew at the Time

‘I knew at the Time’, by Jess Leonard is fascinating as it is one of the few artworks in the exhibition that adheres to a more traditional approach to the photographic medium. Or is it? The artwork and the narrative asks the viewer so many questions. Ones that remain unanswered by the work.  We are left with discussions and questions. As the artists says in their artists statement, ‘themes of women, the body and place, memory and mystery… The story you walk away with is yours to believe.’

ARTISTS STATEMENT: Perhaps uncanny and slightly disorientating this work explores themes of women, the body and place, memory and mystery with only a fragment of the narrative presented before the viewer. The story you walk away with is yours to believe.

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THE FINALISTS

Name                          Artwork Title

Alex Walker                 Manual Exposure

Anna Carey                 Crystal Mystery, 2022

Annabelle McEwen     Self Scan B (photogrammetry)

Arrayah Loynd            I don’t always understand/selectively mute (diptych)

Ben Kelly                     Dimension

Chris Bowes                Dip/Dunk #1

Chris Bowes                Sun Kissed

Chris Byrnes                Beyond the Photogram Chasing Alison No 1 Dawn Light

Damian Dillon             Bourgeois Cha Cha #7

Dave Carswell             Flocculation #2

Holly Schulte               Swell (37)

Jacinta Giles                For the Birds?

Jenny Pollak                Free Fall

Jess Leonard               I Knew At The Time

Judith Nangala Crispin A flying saucer over Clyde Mountain, shows Declan, dead at two hours old, how to make a new body out of light

Katrina Crook              Untitled#1 (In Silence)

Kelly Marie Slater       Landshapes: Pass between Needles

Kenneth Lambert        Burden of Proof (Data Portrait of Magdalene)

Kim Percy                    Sway

Marcus O’Donnell       (De)Composition – a dark ecology

Matthew Schiavello    Under the Sea

Melanie Cobham        The Colony Reclaims the Land

Nicholas Hubicki         Vitichiton (the end of the forests)

Nikky Morgan-Smith   Index

Peter Rossi                  Unchopping A Tree

Regina Piroska            I Followed A Worm (accordian book)

Stephen Blanch           The Acrobat and the Flea (Flood Loss, Lismore 2022)

Tebani Slade               Of me in the landscape

Wouter Van de Voorde          Uncontrolled

Yianni Maggacis          The Good Room XII

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Chris Bowes 2017 PHOTO: Doug Spowart

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CHRIS BOWES’ COMMENTS ON RECEIVING THE PRIZE

Published on his social media after the Prize’s announcement …

Chris Bowes’ @quisbie

Well, this was a pleasant surprise.
I’ve been making art for over a decade, and yesterday was probably the highlight of my career so far. Ever since I made my first conceptual project Sweat nine years ago, I’ve been wanting to create a process that captured some of those ideas using ‘landscape’ photography. When I first picked up a camera 15 odd years ago, my main interest was shooting landscapes. This focus transitioned to conceptual photography while I studied, and it completely changed the way I viewed and used the medium. What I’m most excited about is that this prize money will go back into the photographic community by supporting my new venture @kindredcameras.
It feels really validating to win a competition like this, but I feel conflicted about competitions because while I’ve come out on top, there are lots of other amazing artists who were just as deserving of the win. I want to acknowledge the significant time and money that artists put into being a part of these things with the unlikely hopes that they’ll win the big prize. It’s often a huge financial burden and an emotional rollercoaster. The work from all the other artists in the show is incredible, and I hope you go and have a look at their practices

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ABOUT THE ADJUDICATORS

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Eloise Maree     PHOTO: Doug Spowart

Eloise Maree

Eloise is an artist and arts worker privileged to be living and working on and with Gundungurra and Wiradjuri land (Blue Mountains and Bathurst, New South Wales).

Eloise is a photographic artist utilising wet plate photographic processes. Eloise is interested in the relationships between people and place, in the history, and historical processes, of photography and in ‘creative histories’. Eloise’s camera-original wet plate photographs are both historical (hand sensitised using a silver nitrate solution, for example) and contemporary (shot using modern lenses, for example, and or lighting). This locates Eloise’s photographic art in the past as well as the present, and this colocation enables Eloise’s revisionings of histories and archives.

Eloise is experienced by way of Craig Tuffin as well as by way of Ellie Young of Gold Street Studios, a Bachelor of Visual Arts (Honours) (Sydney College of the Arts, the University of Sydney) and a Master of Museum Studies (the University of Sydney).

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ABOUT THE AWARD’S BENEFACTORS: DOUG AND BARBARA MULLINS

In 2009, Barbara Mullins provided the Australian Photographic Society with a bequest in memory of her husband, the late Doug Mullins, President of the Society 1964-1966.  This bequest was part of the proceeds from the sale of Mullins Gallery, the former headquarters of the South Australian Photographic Federation of which Doug was Patron.

At that time the bequest was intended to support the regular publication of an APS book of members’ work. In 2011 the first edition of APS Gallery was published. In 2012, the APS celebrated its 50^th anniversary and a second book was published. No further books have been created and the balance of the bequest has since grown through interest earned.

Seeking to ensure the long-term future of its new Australian Conceptual Photography Prize introduced in 2019, the Society approached the Mullins family with a proposal that would satisfy the intent of honouring both Doug’s and Barbara’s significant contributions to the APS. There was much synergy in the proposal with the style of Doug’s exhibition photography in the Prize, and in Doug and Barbara’s generous support of the arts and the Art Gallery of SA.

In early December 2019, approval was received to apply the balance of the bequest funds to the Prize. The Society has, therefore, retitled the prize as the Mullins Conceptual Photography prize (MCPP) and it will be a permanent reminder of Barbara and Doug Mullins.

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The coordinators of the MCPP are Brian Rope and Roger Skinner – Thank you for your enthusiasm, energy and hard work to help make the Prize happen.

Roger Skinner and Max  PHOTO: Doug Spowart

THE MULLINS CONCEPTUAL PHOTOGRAPHY PRIZE gratefully acknowledges all their supporters and sponsors:

•    Bengalla Mining Company www.newhopegroup.com.au

•    Ilford www.instagram.com/ilfordphoto/

•    MACH Energy www.machenergyaustralia.com.au

•    Malabar www.malabarresources.com.au

•    Australian Photography magazine www.australianphotography.com