WINNER ANNOUNCED THURSDAY 16 NOVEMBER 2006, 12 NOON
ART GALLERY OF NEW SOUTH WALES

Seven artists have been selected for this year’s Anne Landa Exhibition and Award, the first award exhibition in Australia for moving image and new media work.

The award, which began in 2004, was initiated by Sophie Landa and Edmund Capon to honour the work and life of Sophie’s mother Anne Landa, an enthusiastic supporter of the arts. In keeping with her passion and energy the award celebrates contemporary artistic practice. The winner is awarded $25,000.

From a shortlist of artists, the judges Natasha Bullock (Assistant Curator, Contemporary Art), Linda Michael (Curator, Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art 2006) and Edmund Capon (Director) - selected the seven artists.

Daniel Crooks is interested in the visual transformation of time and space through digital means. His videos and digital prints present synthetically cut and carefully arranged images. Daniel von Sturmer is also interested in the ways in which objects take on a life of their own — from paper, string and the humble kitchen sponge to a golf ball. In all of these videos the body is absent even though the movement portrayed within is carefully acted out.

Tony Schwensen’s work is of the body — his own. His performances repeat the same move for a long time, and are often humorous. Creating work for this exhibition, Schwensen situated himself on the industrial scales in the gallery's packing room for eleven hours. Over an eleven hour period will anything change? In fact, will he lose weight?

The body is also used by Monika Tichacek as a site of pain and desire. In The Shadowers (2004) the viewer stands in the midst of a three screen video installation in which a power relationship of subservience and assertiveness unfolds between three protagonists (one of whom is Tichacek). The participants are connected in emotional and physical ways: their skin is pierced and string is used to unite them.

Synthetically created bodies of colour and form are the primary focus of Philip Brophy’s Body Malleable (2002-04). For this exhibition he presents a projected image, sound and a sculptural ball into which the viewer is invited to insert their finger. The finger becomes the controlling device. This is a hands-on experience and as the images transform the sound responds as well.

Grant Stevens is concerned with the language of popular culture, using text, sound and image to develop his humorous work. His sources range from narratives presented in a television soap opera to the cliché-speak of a holiday brochure.

James Lynch is interested in people’s dreams in which he appears as a central or marginal character. He renders these dream sequences in animated form, drawing, painting and adding overall texture to the progression of images, which are deliberately paced from frame to frame to accentuate the disjointed qualities of memory.