Murwillumbah artist’s flood-home painting up for Wynne Prize

MURWILLUMBAH-based artist Robyn Sweaney’s painting The Red Zone has been named a finalist in this year’s Wynne Prize.

The Art Gallery of New South Wales prize is Australia’s oldest for landscape painting and figurative sculpture.

The work depicts a house in South Murwillumbah that was cordoned off in the ‘red zone’ as a part of the state’s voluntary flood-affected home buyback scheme.

The long-time Mullumbimby resident moved to Murwillumbah a year ago, and Sweaney had long wanted to capture some of the fenced-off River Street houses.

“It’s a beautiful street, and I don’t know who owned the house or anything about them,” she said.

“I tried to find out why they had fences up for a year. I have a theory, but it does give people a choice, and time to work out if they want to move the house themselves or sell up.”

Sweaney said she was drawn to the 1950s house for its simplicity and clean lines.

“Houses mean a lot of different things, and the fence told another story,” she said.

“I didn’t paint all the roses at the front, which was very complex, but it’s clearly a well-loved house.

“It wasn’t neglected, it was solid and well maintained, but obviously it’s in a high flow area, so they’ve chosen to go.”

The artist is well known for her paintings of mid-century homes in the Northern Rivers and is always on the lookout for her next subject.

“My first exhibition was in Mullumbimby, and I just happened to be there on the cusp of things changing,” she said.

“I wanted to capture some of that simplicity, the austerity, the clean lines, and the composition of these old houses.

“I’m looking for design elements, but the thing with a home is that there are so many stories on so many different levels.

“There are different ways to look at them, such as philosophical and social ideas, and how things have changed over the years.

“When I first started doing these paintings, there were McMansions nestled alongside little houses in the cities.

“I was trying to point out the fact that these houses still existed 50 or 60 years later.”

The Murwillumbah art community is fortunate to now claim the six-time Wynne Prize finalist as one of its own.

Sweaney’s capture of a layered local story – a family home, shuttered and still, awaiting its fate – will be on exhibition at the Art Gallery of NSW until August 17.