National Works on Paper Winners announced

Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery’s popular biennial award, National Works on Paper, returns this month with the shortlisted works on display in a free exhibition running until 24 November.

For more than fifty years, the National Works on Paper event has presented a generation-defying survey of contemporary art celebrating the medium of paper in all its forms.

Evolving from the Gallery’s Spring Festival of Drawing and Prints Acquisitive in 1973, National Works on Paper has become one of the leading art awards and exhibitions in the country, attracting Australia’s foremost contemporary artists working with paper.

For this year’s exhibition, there were 1,049 artists representing every state and territory across Australia who submitted entries. Just 70 works shortlisted for the award – including four works from Mornington Peninsula-based artists – showing the depth and breadth of this vast and all-encompassing survey covering painting, printmaking, drawing, video, sculpture and weaving.

2024 NATIONAL WORKS ON PAPER WINNERS

National Works on Paper 2024 $20,000 Major Acquisitive Award Winner
D Harding, (Potentially) enough bodypaint for three dancers, 2023

D Harding says: ‘This sheet of paper, when folded, is small enough to be carried in a backpack, or be mailed to someone in the post. The paper is coated with my approximation of enough bodypaint that three dancers could re-wet and use to paint their bodies. The natural, water-soluble white bodypaint on this sheet of paper may be shared, carried, or stored in potentia.’

Judges’ comments: ‘The judges were impressed with the simplicity of this work, the simplicity which holds so much cultural weight though it is portable, physically light, barely there. Its silence speaks volumes. Harding has presented a very clever use of paper, making it active, a vessel, a carrier of Country, Culture, ritual, people. Three makes a crowd, a community and the temporal aspect of this work is mesmerising. Even away from Country you can carry it, literally, with you and reactivate your community.’

National Works on Paper 2024 Emerging Artist $5,000 award winner
Kyra Mancktelow, Mrs (Unconstitutional Love), 2024

Artist statement: ‘Mrs (Unconstitutional Love) is a wedding dress that honours my Ancestors and continues the exploration of the history of garments in Australia as a means by which to address the ongoing impact of colonisation in this nation. Until the 1960s, Indigenous Australians could only marry with government permission. These garments and prints investigate long-lasting legacies of colonialism, asking questions such as how we remember and acknowledge these histories. My hope is to draw upon the strength of resistance by adapting, and retaining cultural ways and identity.’

Judges’ comments: ‘Kyra Macktelow has impressed the judges with her precise printing technique using soft organza material often used for wedding dresses, while also referencing a very specific time in Australian history that saw racist social policies determining who Aboriginal people could marry. The anonymity and absence of the wearer sits on the sheet as evidence, a facsimile that insists on a reclamation of history and a remembering of individual and community pain. Its life-size and floating aspect drive this haunting effect and make this a compelling piece. It is a moment we need to remember so past mistakes are not repeated.’

Friends of MPRG acquisitions: Djakanyu Yunupingu, Solomon Booth, Kieran Karritpul, Joel Wolter

MPRG acquisitions: Amala Groom, Bori Benkő, Olga Cironis