By Bridget Spinks
Over 60 artists from around Australia are in the running for the Mandorla Art Award 2010 and its prize of $20,000.
This year’s theme for the religious art award is “And who is my neighbour?” taken from the parable of the Good Samaritan in Luke’s Gospel 10.29.
“We take a scripture passage as our theme each time and we have been doing that since 1985 … and have attracted artists on a national level painting their own reflections on the given theme,” Servite Friar Chris Ross OSM, a founding father of the Mandorla Art Award, said. Camilla Loveridge, a practising artist and the exhibition’s curator, told The Record that while the theme of the exhibition is Christian, the committee hopes it will appeal to all people of good will and beliefs, not only Christians.
“We hope that anyone who can respond to this Christian message or the spirit of the story of the Good Samaritan that they embrace that and represent their response to that Christian message visually,” Mrs Loveridge said.
The Mandorla Art Award is a platform for artists to express a valid contemporary theme, she said. “It’s very topical today to love your neighbour or ask who is my neighbour considering that the world is so war torn over territory and people. I think it’s a really good platform for people to address that message of Christ in the story as it is relevant for today,” Mrs Loveridge said.
Over the last 25 years the Mandorla Art Award has been held 14 times. This year the prize is $20,000 thanks to the recent sponsorship of St John of God Healthcare and other sponsors.
In previous years, the major prize was $10,000 and it could have been taken as cash but normally it was taken in the form of a return airfare to Italy and two months’ accommodation in a studio in the hills in Umbria. Mandorla acquires the winning work with each exhibition and holds the collection of winners in the contemporary art gallery at New Norcia.
“I can’t think of a better place to hang them than there. Busloads of people come to the Benedictine town expecting to see religious art,” Fra Ross said.
Since is inception in 1985, competing artists for the Mandorla Art Award have been Anglican, Orthodox, Catholic and even Jewish.
This year, over 40 entrants passed pre-selection and an additional 20 artists were invited to prepare a contribution for the religious art award.
Fra Ross said that he believes that every artist is spiritual.
“To stand in front of an empty canvas and to come up with something that will speak to people; to me, that’s transcendent,” he said.
“By giving the theme a scriptural passage, we’re pointing the artists in a particular direction but not in any way telling them how to express it.”
The Mandorla Art Award 2010 entries will be exhibited at the Moores Building Contemporary Art Gallery, Fremantle from 1-17 October. After this exhibition the works will be displayed again at both Murdoch and Subiaco St John of God hospitals for a time.
The public is invited to visit St Mary’s Cathedral on 26-27 June to see the artwork of eight former Mandorla Art Award winners. Among the work in this exhibition will be Australian artists Julie Dowling (2000 winner) and the late Michael Kane Taylor (2004).