MELBOURNE artist Ash Keating was awarded the inaugural Guirguis New Art Prize at a formal ceremony at the Art Gallery of Ballarat yesterday.
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Mr Keating won the $20,000 award for his work West Park Proposition (2012).
The work comprised a two-and-a-half minute, three-screen video installation.
“The work was made near Ballarat on the Deer Park bypass,” Mr Keating said.
“It is an aesthetic comment about the way these new tilt-slab industrial buildings spring up without caring for the environment.”
Mr Keating said the work, which took eight hours to create, was about reclaiming the space from “cost-effective architecture” without any aesthetics.
Judge Jason Smith, director of Heide Museum of Modern Art, said choosing the winner of the GNAP was exhilarating and excruciating.
“Ash Keating’s work kept drawing me back in the several hours I spent viewing the works,” Mr Smith said.
“It simultaneously affirms the political and critical role of the artist as a key agent of change and action, and someone who reminds us of the beauty and resilience of humanity and nature in the face of unrelenting change.”
Mark Guirguis said the works of the 11 finalists for GNAP 2013 provided the opportunity to challenge ideas about the nature of art and its audiences.
