Advertisement

Percival Portrait Prize brings art and soul to Townsville

One of Queensland’s most prestigious visual art competitions, the Percival Portrait Prize, is proceeding this year, with the selection panel last week choosing the works that will be hung at Townsville’s Perc Tucker Regional Gallery in May.

 

Mar 31, 2020, updated Mar 31, 2020
Brisbane artist Sarah Hickey's portrait of Tara Moss will feature in this year's Percival Portrait Prize.

Brisbane artist Sarah Hickey's portrait of Tara Moss will feature in this year's Percival Portrait Prize.

Townsville City Galleries creative director Jonathan McBurnie said he was hopeful the gallery would be able to host some form of public showing, with the finalists’ exhibition scheduled to launch on May 22.

“It’s a little hard to know exactly what that will look like right now, given the situation,” McBurnie told InQueensland.

“But we’re crossing our fingers and we hope we’ll be able to have a public launch, but yeah, we will be just taking advice from the State Government, and council, obviously, and figuring out what the best course of action is, so I can’t really guarantee that we’ll be able to do a launch but we hope that we will be able to.”

McBurnie said other options were also being explored to ensure the Percivals would go ahead in some form.

“Certainly, we will be looking into other platforms, in the meantime, regardless of what we know we’ll be able to do, so we’re hoping to have some sort of a virtual tour for the exhibition,” he said.

“We’re hoping to also include contributions from each of the represented artists in the exhibition as well so hopefully we can get as many statements about their work from them as possible in their own words and actually make that a feature of any kind of, you know, interactive elements that we’re able to add to it.”

The Percival Portrait Prize started in 2007 – with a modest prize of $3000 – in response to stalled negotiations to show the Archibald Prize in Townsville.  It has since evolved to become a biennial competition, with acquisitive prizes of $40,000 for the winning painted portrait and $10,000 for the best photographic portrait.

Kellie Leczinska’s Mbathio, Marrickville (2017), which won the Percival Photographic Portrait Prize in 2018.

The Percival Prize now regularly attracts entries from across Australia and is also open to international artists and McBurnie said its growth in status reflected Townsville’s “appetite for getting amongst the leading cities for not only visual arts but culture in general in the country”.

“I mean we’re not going to make any big claims of being the cultural centre of Australia or anything but we like to think that, in terms of being a regional centre, we do have a lot to contribute to the arts.

“Our community really values the arts and so does council and we’re always working to find the next thing we can do and what are people going to enjoy – we’re always searching for the next thing.”

McBurnie said the gallery had received hundreds of entries this year and was spoilt for choice, and making a decision was even harder than normal for the selection panel, because Townsville’s Pinnacles gallery, which normally displays the photographic portraits, was yet to reopen following last year’s floods.

“Usually we have the painting prize in one building and the photography prize in another but this year, we’ll have them all mixed in together,” he said.

InQueensland in your inbox. The best local news every workday at lunch time.
By signing up, you agree to our User Agreement andPrivacy Policy & Cookie Statement. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

“It has essentially halved the space that we’ve had for the shows, and so obviously it’s half the number of participants we could take. We’ve had to be so tough in the selection process, so it’s just the top, top people getting in.”

Brisbane-based artist Sarah Hickey, who had one of her pieces hung in the competition in 2012, has been accepted for entry for this year’s prize for her portrait of Canadian-Australian author, journalist and human rights advocate Tara Moss.

“I have such admiration for Tara Moss and what she represents, so it’s also an acknowledgement of her,” Hickey said.

“The original portrait took another shape when she cut her hair and dyed it black – she had a bit of a bob at one stage – so the painting has completely changed [since 2016], it’s just been constantly evolving. Of course, that’s completely Tara’s message, that women aren’t cookie-cutter, or just one thing.”

The process for me is there’s a wisdom that comes through creativity and it’s almost like it comes together and then you reflect on it with your logical mind and go ‘a ha, that’s clever – I could not have logically come up with that before I did it’.”

McBurnie said he was pleased to events such as The Percival Portrait Prize were helping change perceptions about Townsville’s cultural scene.

“That’s actually a big reason why we do things like The Percival Prize and Strand Ephemera and things like that. We really like to get international and national-level artists in to Townsville.

“We like to do workshops with them, you know, get a lot of networking going and get people here doing things exposed to people doing things from elsewhere, so we’re very excited to support both local, national and international talent.”

Visit townsville.qld.gov.au/

Local News Matters
Advertisement

We strive to deliver the best local independent coverage of the issues that matter to Queenslanders.

Copyright © 2024 InQueensland.
All rights reserved.
Privacy Policy