Posts Tagged ‘Gladstone Regional Art Gallery and Museum’
COOPER+SPOWART+MARCHBANK SHORT-FILM WINS AWARD
“CLICK” to view the YouTube video of the winning short-film “BEING PRESENT – Mokoan: Wet”
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Cooper+Spowart and Bree Marchbank have just won FIRST PRIZE in Section 4: Photography and Digital Works in the 2026 Martin Hanson Memorial Art Awards at the Gladstone Regional Art Gallery and Museum.
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THE BACK STORY OF THE WORK
Many of you will be aware of how Mokoan, (also known as Winton Wetlands) in northern Victoria, has become our muse over the last 5 years. While our previous creative responses have been resolved in artists books and framed diptychs, our recent work is a short film.
In this work we continue to explore the continuing flux of presence and absence in the environment of Mokoan as well as the concept of Being Present in the landscape. Our submission was accompanied by the following statement:
Being present in the landscape is the moment where we lose ourselves – corporeality evaporates, and the physical space becomes a psychological state. A poetic and aesthetic conversation arises through observation, walking and deep reverie with the land and its multi-layered historical and ecological narrative. This place is neither still nor silent; the air and land is dynamic, filled with sound and movement.
The impetus to work on this project came from Nikki James, Yorta Yorta Nation Elder and Traditional Owner, currently the Koorie Cultural Engagement Officer at Mokoan Winton Wetlands. She invited us to present our work at a NAIDOC event she was planning in July this year.
As the design of the project and initial image sequences were resolved we invited Bree Marchbank, a sound artist who has great empathy with the land, its spirit and narrative, to create a sonic composition to further animate the video. Marchbank’s sound combines in situ sampling in the Wetlands, with instrumental and voice work created in response to both being present and the visual narrative of the video.
Our short film was finished and presented at the Wetland’s NAIDOC event on July 10, 2026. Following the premiere of the video we were asked to participate in an impromptu Q&A session – the work was very well received for its communicative ability to present an experience of the Mokoan.
The BEING PRESENT – Mokoan: Wet HD video is 5 minutes 24 seconds duration. Soon after the NAIDOC presentation the video was entered in the Martin Hanson Memorial Art Awards at Gladstone Regional Art Gallery and Museum. We selected the Photography and Digital Works section as it also included moving image, animation and soundscape works.
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ABOUT THE MARTIN HANSON MEMORIAL ART AWARD
Since its inauguration in 1976, this Award has become one of Queensland’s most prestigious regional art events and is eagerly anticipated each year. The Award acknowledges Martin Hanson who was a popular and highly respected local businessman, a Member for Legislative Assembly (MLA) for Port Curtis 1963-1976, and patron to the Gladstone Artists Club. The Awards cover 4 Sections including: Easel Painting, Works on Paper, 3D & Fibre works, Photography & Digital works as well as many other special awards.
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ABOUT THE JUDGE
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Rachael Parsons, Director of New England Regional Art Museum (NERAM). Rachael is an Australian curator, educator and academic. With more than 15 years experience, she has worked as an independent and institutional curator across university, commercial, public and artist-run spaces.
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THE AWARD
FIRST PRIZE Section 4: Photography and Digital Works
Sponsored by the Gladstone Regional Art Gallery
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BEING PRESENT – Mokoan: Wet – Sample Sequence
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SEE OTHER AWARD SECTIONS AND PRIZES
Martin Hanson Art Award list 2026 – winners-list
ARTISTS’ STATEMENTS ABOUT THEIR PRACTICE
Portrait by David Williams
For Victoria Cooper and Doug Spowart collaboration is a dynamic space to test and challenge their individual creative practice and explore new and unchartered territory. They are informed by Charles Green’s book The Third Hand, where he proposes that collaboration creates a new entity full of potential and possibilities.
Over time their collaboration with Nature and the non-human has deepened and broadened their perceptions of Being-in-the-world. Their practice of Being is fully engaged with Nature.
Bree Marchbank with gong Photo by Doug Spowart
Bree Marchbank approaches sound creation as ritual and collaboration, using improvisation to explore connections to place. The sound developed through a devotional practice which included field recordings and attentive listening in community and nature.
Her recordings capture the living presence of place, with and without instrumentation, creating sonic textures, and relational gestures that invite deeper connection and shared experiences for the audience. The sound reflects repeating patterns that mirror organic processes of emergence and transformation.
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OTHER COOPER+SPOWART WORKS IN HANSON ART AWARDS
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2023 Martin Hanson Memorial Art Award – Works presented
MARTIN HANSEN MEMORIAL ART AWARDS: Our Works
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2020 Martin Hanson Memorial Art Award – Winner of 2 Awards – Works on Paper
COOPER+SPOWART books win ‘works on paper’ Awards
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2010 Martin Hanson Memorial Art Award – Winner of Works on Paper
SEE REFERENCE to the artwork Australian Banquet, January 25/ 26, 1788
BRITISH LIBRARY Acquires our cyanotype artists’ book
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MARTIN HANSON MEMORIAL ART AWARDS: Our Works
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Once again we entered the Martin Hanson Memorial Art Awards at the Gladstone Regional Art Gallery and Museum. These Awards are the 48th event – Congratulations to the Gallery Team and the continued recognition of Martin Hanson’s early patronage of artists initiatives in Gladstone through these Awards.
For us each award entered is a place to present new works and their presentation – it is a challenge that hones our skills as artists.
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This year Victoria’s entry was an artist book entitled String Theory Explained.
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Victoria COOPER’s String Theory Explained presented
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String Theory Explained… its all about the unplanned and chaotic nature of everyday life… the beauty and terror within the order of “normal” existence.
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Opening up the book
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Bibliographic Details:
Format: Concertina book embedded in folded cover
Media: various pen inks on art paper with Stonehenge black cover
Size: 764 x 230mm
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Doug’s entry this year was Story Trees – First Nations a concertina artists book presented in a circular form.
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Doug SPOWART – Story Trees artists book
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Artist’s Statement:
For me a poignant physical sign of First Nations presence remains embedded in the dead trees found throughout Mokoan. In witnessing these scar trees I found a profound sense of a time now passed and thoughts of the many stories that this place can tell.
This book was book two in a series of personal responses to encountering the locality of Mokoan and the Winton Wetlands. It was part of my contribution to the PALIMPSEST collaborative exhibition with Maggie Hollins and Victoria Cooper shown at Bainz Gallery in Wangaratta in August.
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Bibliographic Details:
Format: Concertina book
Media: Pigment inks on photographic paper
Size in circular presentation: 600 x 700mm
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Doug’s Story Trees installed at GRAGM
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The Martin Hanson Memorial Art Awards exhibition will be on show until 2.00pm on the 27th of January 2024 at the Gladstone Regional Art Gallery and Museum.
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Here is some information about the 2023 Awards and the Entry Form.
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CLICK THIS LINK MH 23 Catalogue Online-r
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CLICK THIS LINK Martin Hanson Award 2023 Entry Details
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Photo of gallery installation courtesy of GRAGM
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COOPER SCROLLS @ Toowoomba Regional Art Gallery
Victoria Cooper in the Off The Wall installation of three scrolls from the series of five
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ABOUT ‘THE STORIES OF THE GORGE’ ON SHOW @ TRAG
Victoria Cooper’s digital montage Stories from the Gorge scrolls, made over ten years ago were included in Toowoomba Regional Art Gallery show. The exhibition was entitled Off the wall and was on show in Gallery 2 and Amos Gallery in May 2013.
The information about the exhibition that follows comes from the exhibition room sheet prepared at the time by Toowoomba Regional Art Gallery Exhibitions Officer, Ashleigh Bunter:
The works in the exhibition have been selected from the Toowoomba Regional Art Gallery’s City Collection. They have been placed simply together due to their three-dimensional nature and to highlight their derivation from the traditional two-dimensional picture plane.
This exhibition demonstrates the way that artists manipulate physical depth within their works which can often create a greater engagement between the object and the viewer. Interestingly, many of the works in this exhibition focus upon environment, whether it is the natural, public or the domestic environment. Materiality is also a common consideration. Throughout this exhibition one can see the influence of ‘the collector’, artists who gather images or common materials, reusing and reinterpreting them to create their art.
Victoria Cooper’s Stories from the Gorge: Order, chaos and the story of the hillside is a Chinese-landscape-scroll inspired series that represents “the last bastion of a natural chaos and order, an anti-culture, occurring on the fringes of agriculture.”[i] Human effects on the natural environment are central to Cooper’s practice and her prints and artists’ books in various formations lead the view from a flat two dimensional plane into the landscapes she investigates. These printed scrolls rise up from handmade acrylic boxes like the tall gum trees on their surfaces.
Other artists in the Off The Wall show include; Michael Schlitz, Marieke Dench, Tiffany Shafran, Judith Kentish, and Brigid Cole-Adams and the exhibition will be on the wall until May 26, 2013.
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PRIZES AND AWARDS
2001 The Gorge was purchased by Australian Library of Art at the State Library of Queensland
2001 – Photographer and gallery director Sandy Edwards awarded The Gorge, First Prize in the Muswellbrook Photography Award
2001 – MCA Director Elizabeth Ann Macgregor awarded The Cliff, First Prize for Works on Paper, Martin Hanson Memorial Art Awards, Gladstone Regional Art Gallery and Museum
2002 – Five Stories from the Gorge was a Finalist in the 2002 Josephine Ulrick & Win Schubert Foundation for the Arts Photography Award at the Gold Coast City Art Gallery was selected by Isobel Crombie Curator at the National Gallery of Victoria
2002 –The triptych was acquired during its showing in the Toowoomba Biennial Acquisitive Award selected by Julie Ewington, then Curator at the Queensland Art Gallery..
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Three images of the Stories from the Gorge triptych as presented @TRAG
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THE BACKSTORY OF THE SCROLLS AND THE SERIES OF 5 WORKS
Cooper’s scrolls were presented for the TRAG exhibition as a triptych, however in the original exhibition, entitled Searching for the Sublime, there were five scrolls. Searching for the Sublime was a collaborative project with sculptor Jim Roberts, fellow artist Doug Spowart and curator Deborah Godfrey. The inspiration for the project was a wilderness area in the Helidon Hills a mere 20 kilometres north-east of Toowoomba. Supported by an RADF Grant, the show featured Roberts’ sculptures, Spowart’s abstract water photographs, and Cooper’s scrolls and was shown at 62 Robertson Gallery in Brisbane in August 2001.
Searching for the Sublime @ Gallery 62 Robinson PHOTO: Courtesy of 62 Robertson
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Five Stories from the Gorge installation at SQIT Gallery
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The images were assembled as a photomontage in the tiny, by current sizes, Blueberry iMac computer. At times Victoria juggled 200 layers in one Adobe Photoshop document to create the fiction panoramas. Seeing the whole image was a problem as most of the time Cooper’s view was no bigger than the iMac screen requiring her to ‘scroll’ the image up and down–just as you will do in looking at the images in this post. Saving the files took 20-30 minutes and the system often crashed. The images were printed in pigment inks on an Ilford Novajet printer onto Hahnemühle Japan ‘rice paper’ by IMT on the Gold Coast. Victoria worked with artist Wim de Vos to design the bespoke handmade acrylic boxes. The design featured the ability for the box to not only serve as a container, but also act as a device to display the scrolls.
The complete set of scrolls, Five Stories from the Gorge, was shown in many venues and awards (see prize list at the end of this post), including Photospace at National Art School, Australian National University, Canberra. Canberra Times arts reviewer Myra McIntyre commented that Cooper’s works are:
Most elegant and fascinating photographic objects are Landscape stories, a series of five Asian-inspired scrolls. Cooper crawls, wanders and flies through the Australian landscape gathering hundreds of objects, patterns, and perspectives that she digitally intertwines, creating a continuum of almost imperceptibly diverse perspectives and a physical sense of vertigo in the viewer.
Review, Canberra Times, May 10, 2002
In 2002 the triptych was acquired during its showing in the Toowoomba Biennial Acquisitive Award selected by Julie Ewington, then Curator at the Queensland Art Gallery. Interestingly the rules of the competition at the time restricted entries to work that had not previously won an art award–as such only the three scrolls The Story of the Hillside, Chaos and Order were entered. When purchased the two other scrolls were orphaned from the set.
So here in this blog, we reunite the Five Stories from the Gorge presented in a form for you to scroll/stroll through … Enjoy.
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By Doug Spowart
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Story of the Cliff
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Story of the Gorge
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Story of the Hillside
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
