Review
Courier Mail (Queensland, Australia) Exhibition: 2002 Conrad Jupiters Art Prize Reviewer: Heidi Maier THE 60 works contesting the 2002 Conrad Jupiters Art Prize are as radically different as they often are provocative, intriguing and unconventionally beautiful. Drawn from a pool of 300 initial entries, the final selection is a motley crew of works from established artists and emerging talents that offers a fascinating glimpse into the state of visual arts nationwide. From Marcus Wills's impressive miniature oil portrait, Walking Forward Standing Still, to the photo-realism of Julia Powle's astonishing 50km North of Darwin, the judges have assembled what is, for the most part, a diverse and highly impressive collection of experimental and visually exciting works. Indeed, while pieces such as Adam Cullen's atrocious Cocktail Girl and Blind Date stand out like the proverbial sore thumb, most of the images on show are compelling. Sharon Green's Longing is a stunningly original photograph, as is Constantine Nicholas's Yellow River, an exquisite work of oil paint, ink and gold leaf that conjures up ancient maps of once-otherworldly places. Despite its much brighter palette, Graham Merchant's Studio, Morning Light is strikingly reminiscent of Grace Cossington Smith's works. Similarly, Cassandra Laing's Receiving Bodhicitta is a delicate rendering of the joy etched on the faces of several Buddhist monks as they move through a field of grass. Stylistically different, but no less remarkable, is Simon Mee's disturbing, yet riveting, Gothic-tinged image of a dilapidated, slightly menacing, one-armed doll, discarded in a wooden box. Dressed in an elaborate lace dress, the doll's vacant stare is inescapable and the image is a peculiarly powerful one. Likewise, Fran Tomlin's The Gift is an artful blend of the beautiful and the disturbing. Hanging side by side, Mee and Tomlin's works are two of the finest, and perhaps most unsettling, on display. The imagery of The Gift is eerily akin to that on display in the most autobiographical of Frida Kahlo's works. Like Kahlo, Tomlin exhibits an ability to combine a sense of detachment with gruesome, undeniably corporeal imagery. Yet, amid such intensely personal reflection, an air of distance and confusion remains, making the painting at once fiercely immediate and extremely illusive. Many of the artists whose works are on show here will be unfamiliar to contemporary art viewers. This, however, is one of the exhibition's strengths, for in addition to bringing together a disparate array of artworks, the 2002 Conrad Jupiters Art Prize succeeds in introducing its audience to the works of exceptionally talented and bold Australian artists whose names we otherwise might never have heard.
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