Canvas pulled into prize showcase

VISUAL artist Mairin Briody has been named a finalist in Bendigo Art Gallery’s biennial Arthur Guy Memorial Painting Prize for 2023.

Pulling together. Falling apart. is a mass of dyed canvas, which has not been stretched in a traditional way, but attached to a bar and draped.

“I’ve been stuck on the question of what is painting in a world that feels like it’s falling apart?” she said.

“It feels as if there is tension everywhere, and we’re all still getting up, and going to work, but we all know we’re hurtling towards a calamity. So, what is art and painting in that space?

“I’m going into the studio, trying to connect with how I’m feeling at the moment, and I can’t bring myself to stretch a taut canvas across a stretcher bar again.

“It just doesn’t feel that that’s what the canvas wants, or what I want to do with it, so I allow the canvas to fall and to fold.

“That’s how I feel in myself; I want to fall and fold, and need to gather myself up again, then let myself go.”

More than 900 artists entered the Arthur Guy Memorial Painting Prize in 2023.

Subsequently, Geelong Art Gallery director and CEO Jason Smith and Guy family member Penelope Wise shortlisted 36 finalists.

“The prize looks at painting in all sorts of different ways it can be expressed as a discipline,” Briody said. “I thought, if I was ever going to get into a prize, this would be the one I might get into.

“To have been selected to be a part of this show is winning. It’s so affirming and exciting. To have my work in the Bendigo Art Gallery is enough as it is.”

To be announced on Friday 24 November, the winner of the prize will receive $50,000 and have their work acquired by Bendigo Art Gallery for its collection.

The exhibition of finalists will be on display from the following day, until Sunday 18 February.

“I’m terrified but so excited to see my work in the space,” Briody said.

The late Allen Guy CBE established the award 20 years ago to honour his brother Arthur Guy who died as a young man during military service in New Guinea.