Playing the game is such sweet sorrow...

OR a bitter pill to swallow!!

What am I talking about...?? Well the game is this instance is the art prize game that is loved and hated by about nearly every artist that I know!! They are one of the most excruciating and tortuous tests for any artist... and sadly can be a necessary evil if you want to try to be an artist and be inside this art world that we hold so dear...

Its funny - as unless you are part of this small little sphere - you have no idea of how it all works... So I thought Id give you a little incite - well- from my perspective anyway...

Geoff Dyer (Tasmania)

Throughout the year galleries all over the country hold art prizes for all different types of artists... Photographers, painters, drawers, print makers etc. and they have many different categories to try and entice as many different people as possible such as emerging, established, students... Most galleries try to keep their criteria for entering as open as possible so as to make you feel that there is a great chance that you will be a finalist or win! Now this is where it gets tricky... from my experience I don't thick chance plays a big part in entering prizes... I believe there are many many other factors involved... and this is the part that most galleries hope that you will not know about! Sounds funny?? It is... its hilarious...

Kate Shaw (Sydney)

Art prizes are a game.

Truly... they are a game that become easier to understand the older that you get as the rules become more obvious, depending on what prize you enter... For example the Archibald... What a prize that is... The winner is instantly famous and people from all over the country commission you to do them a work, galleries want to represent you and the prize money goes to paying off your mortgage!! But the reality for most of the thousands of people that enter is that their painting - that took them a year to do and hundreds of dollars to frame - will be rejected and collected from the back loading dock pretty much as soon as they had entered it!

Believe me... Ive been there! And the paintings that have been selected are usually HUGE, expense to produce, done by an established artist that has been around the block a few times and is known by the selectors who are not artists themselves but are part of the board for the Art Gallery of NSW...

Now this is only one example and there are many many more... but one thing that all artists have in common is that once in a while they will have to enter a prize... for such reasons as... working toward a goal than just playing in the studio, for alittle prestige, for the money... or hopefully for fun!!

This reality was opened up to the public in a great doco on Artscape last week... called Landscape of the Wynne... which followed four artists as they attempted to produce an art piece for the Wynne Landscape Prize that is held in tandem with the Archibald every year. Geoff Dyer, Graham Fransella, Ben McKeown and Kate Shaw were followed as they attempted to explain the process of finding their inspiration, producing the work, framing and then sending their works to Sydney for judging.

As I watched I realised that we are all in the same boat... As artists we all seem to like to play this macabre game of torture - testing ourselves against others and hoping to win the jackpot and have a type of approval for all the time spent in this little world of our own making i.e. the studio!



It was a timely thing for me to watch - as I had just entered the fray myself and entered my first painting prize in about 2 years!! It was scary, fun, exhausting, nerve-wracking, and in the end... rewarding! And why was it rewarding? Because i finished a piece that I was happy with for longer than a day and didn't want to change ..... and produced something different my usual aesthetic....


And ive made the cut and become a finalist.
With these two works {above and below}...



So for now it was worth it....