Awards 2021

The memory of much-loved artist Howard Arkley is honoured by the Arkley Award, established in 2010 by Arkley’s mother, Gwen and her late partner Frank Lewis. The aim of the prize is to acknowledge the skills of emerging artists and reflect Howard Arkley’s passion as practitioner and teacher.

“We’ve done it in memory of Howard,” said Gwen Arkley. “I feel he would have wanted to help younger artists. He won awards himself, but he was also a very generous artist, teacher and friend.”

The $5,000 non-acquisitive award focusses on talent in painting and photography.

Winner: Alicia King

or NotFair 2021, Alicia King presents a new series of tactile sculptural works using elemental materials and natural forces, including iron and magnetism. Each piece is titled with the coordinates of one of the world’s largest iron deposits, thought to have come to Earth via possible supernovas (PSNs).

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Established in 2017, the Anne Runhardt Art Award was founded to uncover and enable outstanding talent within the visual arts. The $5,000 non-acquisitive award is dedicated to independent, experimental and thought-provoking art deserving of greater recognition and opportunity.  All participating artists of |notfair| are considered finalists of the Anne Runhardt Art Award.

The inaugural 2017 winner was Chris Henschke for his eponymous work Songs of the Phenomena (2016). A transformed nuclear reactor, a mechanical beast feeding of fruit through electrodes, softy howling, pulsing, creating random sounds. The work was since acquired by Dark MOFO, under auspices of MOMA Hobart.

The 2017 award was judged by Gareth Sansom – who’s retrospect exhibition Transformer was showing at NGV Australia at that same time – together with Ashley Crawford and Anne Runhardt.

Winner: Farnaz Dadfar

Farnaz Dadfar The Beloved is Here 2021. Site specific work. 4 x 4 m.

Farnaz Dadfar is an Iranian-born Australian artist, based in Sydney. Her interdisciplinary practice is characterised by a personal narrative offering a small window into an alternative realm of spiritual and philosophical experience. By recuperating certain characteristics of Persian Sufi poetry and Farsi literature as artistic material, she is exploring the concept of linguistic diaspora and flâneur through a lens of displacement and migration.

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A House Haunted… by Art

Ghosts, Gangsters, Artists, Actors, Authors and Musicians have all collided in this magical abode. A veritable Who’s Who of Melbourne’s cultural characters have collected, at one time or another, at a former pub, now dubbed The Lennox, at Richmond’s 208 Lennox Street.

The Lennox Award is founded to enable emerging artist to exhibit and connect at this historical venue. It offers a free exhibition with a fully catered opening night.

The award is kindly presented by Helen Bogdan.

The Lennox Award 2021 will be judged by Helen Bogdan and the Ashley Crawford.

208Lennoxstreet.com

Winners: Ash Coates and Liss Fenwick

Ash Coates is a multi-disciplinary artist. His practice involves, but is not limited to, painting, animation/video, installation and digital art. Across these mediums the artist conjures environmental and scientific narratives, while gleaning reference materials from the landscape, personal events, mythology and science fiction\horror films. Read More:

Liss Fenwick’s Meat Tray is a series of photographs that look at historical narratives of white settlement in rural northern Australia through images that depict flesh-eating ants (Iridomyrmex sanguineus) consuming feral buffalo meat. In a night-time ritual, Fenwick repurposes tarnished silver trays to feed the ants on her family’s rural property in Humpty Doo, NT, on the unceded land of the Larrakia people. Fenwick photographs the ants as they swarm the flesh using the trays as an autobiographical stage for a ‘theatre of the absurd’.  Read More:

Exhibitions were held at The Lennox in February 2022 – view here: