2013 Australia Council Visual Arts Award: Fiona Foley
2013 Australia Council Visual Arts Medal: Julie Ewington
www.australiacouncil.gov.au
Leading artist and curator win major art awards
The Australia Council for the Arts on March 26 recognised the outstanding contributions of visual artist Fiona Foley and curator Julie Ewington by presenting them with the 2013 Visual Arts Awards at the Brisbane Powerhouse.
Fiona Foley, the 2013 Australia Council Visual Arts Award recipient
Fiona is a leading Australian contemporary artist based in Brisbane, Queensland who creates paintings, installations, video and photographs that deal with history, identity and personal signification.
Throughout her career, Foley has engaged issues of indigenous identity within her work and was one of the co-founders of the Boomali Aboriginal Artist Collective in Sydney in the late 1980s. Last year Foley was invited by Michael Walling, Director of the Origins Festival of First Nations to give the Keynote Address in London. In all her work, Foley insists the viewer re-examine and question historical stereotypes.
In 2011 Foley was appointed an Adjunct Professor with the University of Queensland and in 2009–10, the University of Queensland Art Museum with Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art co-curated a major survey exhibition of Fiona Foley’s work, titled Forbidden.
Foley has created has many major public sculpture work such as Bible and Bullets, at Redfern Park, Sydney (2008); Black Opium, State Library of Queensland, Brisbane (2009). She recently had a 25-year retrospective at Andrew Baker Gallery in Brisbane. Her work has also recently been in key exhibitions such as My Country: Contemporary Art form Black Australia, Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane (touring to Auckland Art Gallery in March), Australia at the Royal Academy of Arts, London, 2013, and unDisclosed – 2nd National Indigenous Art Triennial in 2012.
Julie Ewington, the 2013 Australia Council Visual Arts Medal recipient:
Julie Ewington is a curator, writer and broadcaster specialising in contemporary art. She commenced working at Queensland Art Gallery in January 1997, as Curator of Australian Art to 1970, and was appointed Head of Australian Art, with responsibility for Contemporary Art, in 2001. In 2008 she was also appointed as the Curatorial Manager, Australian Art, and currently heads a team working on all aspects of Australian art from European colonisation to the present.
Ewington is an expert on contemporary Southeast Asian art, and contributed to the Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (APT) in 1996, 1999 and 2002 as a curator, as a member of the Curatorium for APT 5 in 2006–07, as a curator for Australian artists for APT 6 in 2009, and again in 2012.
Julie Ewington curated the Gallery’s 2005 solo exhibition for Fiona Hall and wrote the monograph on the artist published by Piper Press; she was lead curator for Contemporary Australia: Optimism in 2008 and Contemporary Australia: Women in 2012, both major exhibitions at the Gallery of Modern Art in a new triennial series. She continues to curate Collection displays and to write texts for both internal and external publications, including co-editing Brought to Light, the two-volume anthology on the Gallery’s Australian collection, published in 1998 and 2007. In 2013 Ewington wrote a monograph on Del Kathryn Barton, published by Piper Press.
About the Australia Council and the Visual Arts Awards
The Australia Council is the Australian Government’s arts funding and advisory body. The Australia Council each year presents the Visual Arts Awards, to acknowledge and honour the exceptional achievements of Australian artists and arts administrators who have made and are continuing to make an outstanding contribution to the development of the Australian art sector.
Media contact
Karen Smith, Media Manager, Australia Council for the Arts
T +61 00 (0) 2 9215 9030 / k.smith [at] australiacouncil.gov.au / www.australiacouncil.gov.au.