Inaugural Winners of Award for Emerging Artists Announced

Media Release
National Association for the Visual Arts
13 October 2006

NAVA is pleased to announce that Louisa Dawson (NSW) and Giles Ryder (NSW) are the two winning entrants in the first round of the RIPE Art & Australia/ANZ Private Bank Contemporary Art Award.

Louisa and Giles will each have their work featured as the back cover of the March and June issues of national art magazine, Art & Australia, with a profile of each artist on the inside back pages. As part of the prize, Art & Australia will also acquire works by the artists.

Editor-in-chief of Art & Australia, Eleonora Triguboff commented today:

Giles Ryder, Blue Spectral, 2006

“On behalf of Art & Australia, I would like to congratulate Louise Dawson and Giles Ryder, the winners of the first round of RIPE… [This] award builds on Art & Australia’s commitment to supporting, encouraging and publicising the best new artistic talent to emerge in Australia.”

 “The combination of exposure and acquisition makes this award a really valuable opportunity for emerging artists”, said NAVA’s Executive Director, Tamara Winikoff.

Louisa Dawson is a sculptor, whose work has recently featured in the 25/25 initiative with www.noise.net. She has created easily recognized objects with displaced functions such as her industrial rubbish bin swimming pool.

Giles Ryder is an installation artist, a recent finalist in the Helen Lempriere Travelling Scholarship, who has previously focused on the idea of fabrication and the ‘readymade’ with the use of auto lacquers, aluminium and mirror works.

The artists were selected from a short list of 20 emerging artists by members of the Art & Australia Advisory Board including Victoria Lynn, Max Delaney and Nick Waterlow.

The RIPE Award is the most recent award to be administered by NAVA and is an evolution of the Emerging Artists program initiated by Art & Australia with ANZ Private Bank. This program has helped launch the careers of several renowned contemporary artists like Del Kathryn Barton, Nick Mangan and Daniel Von Sturmer.

Open to emerging professional artists, applications for round two of the RIPE award will be accepted from 1st January, 2007 on www.visualarts.net.au until 1st February, 2007.

Giles Ryder, Woman, 2006