Reviews on Inside Out Upside Down Gallery Site
Doug Moran Portraiture Prize 2011
The Doug Moran Prize for 2011 has selected some works that border on exceptional. It has also selected some repeats of the same old same old, thrown in some rather poor works and ended up with a cocktail that makes the Archibald selection look positively boring.
Heidi Yardley's work "Rhys Lee - doppelganger" is the stand out best work. The execution of the work is a delight, with only one or two passages that falter. The scale of the work is perfect, along with the skillfull brush work, it delivers a peice that holds a fine emotional context.
Lisa May's "Missing" is a finely composed work that clearly wants to express more than it manages to get across. The brush work is very good in this work, as is the fine gradation of light and shade. Size has been well used to build a context and feeling. The only element I think has not worked is the brush work on the face, with a slight edgyness to the colouring which contradicts the rest of the work.
Kristin Headlam has in the work "Portrait of Max Riebel" made a wonderful statement. The refinement of this work is not so much in the brush work, though there are wonderfully controlled passages across the surface, but rests in the sense that the viewer gets of the sitter. The only point of failure in the painting is the treatment of the eyes, it is as though the painter treated these with greater brevity than the rest of the painting.
As usual I will have to disagree with the judges and say that Vincent Fantauzzo's "Baz Lurhmann 'off screen'" is an oversized poster. The size of the work is a waiste of space, the size delivers nothing to the viewer that could not be achieved in a far smaller work. The quality of brush work disappears in this defocussed photograph, coated in clear plastic to give a glass like finish. I don't think it a bad painting, it just isn't a scratch on the three works I've discussed earlier in the review.
There are other works that are better than the winner amongst those chosen to hange and there are some that could well be referred to as "pots of paint thrown at the surface". But I've provided my remarks and will leave everyone to go and see for themselves, you will probably not agree with me but you will most likely enjoy the exhibition.
author: Neil Miley