Gallipoli Art Prize Winner 2010
Today at Gallipoli Memorial Club in Sydney, it was announced that Tasmanian artist Raymond Arnold (Queenstown) has won the $20,000 Gallipoli Art Prize, for his painting titled The Dead March Here Today, amongst 35 finalists whose works are also on display at the club.
Now in its fifth year the Gallipoli Art Prize, a commemoration rather than a celebration of war, continues to attract a number of entries open to artists born in or citizens of Australia, New Zealand or Turkey, from a broad range of professional and amateur artists.
Arnold is better known as one of Australia’s leading print-makers. Born in 1950, he studied teaching and art in Victoria before developing a professional career in Tasmania. He has participated in 47 solo exhibitions and in group shows in Australian, Europe and the US.
Whilst living in Paris, he visited the battlefields of the Somme several times. I have been walking, cycling and making my own artwork in those old WWI battlefields of Europe for decades.
said Arnold. It’s been a quest into imaginative landscapes, spectral figures in foreign lands, but, in most respects, they live here with us still!
Like many of the entrants every year, Arnold had a great-grandfather who was seriously injured in that war, losing both legs to trench foot while serving in France. It is this personal input that makes this award so unusual, with artists frequently seeing the exhibition as a way of honouring relatives who fought, and often died, in one campaign or another.
The Gallipoli Art Prize does not celebrate war — it pays homage to those who stood up to defend their country when they were called.
said competition judge John McDonald. It draws attention to those values that make for a just and humane society, in times of peace no less than war. Finally, it draws on the abilities of artists to reach an audience in a way that is direct and emotionally satisfying. The experience of war is almost unimaginable to members of younger generations: it is art that does our remembering for us.
The theme of the Gallipoli Art Prize each year is the creed of the Gallipoli Memorial Club, namely those universal values of loyalty, respect, love of country and comradeship. The 2010 judges included John McDonald, Jane Watters, Michael Gleeson White and Clive Curwood.
The public is welcome to view the paintings from 9am to 5pm, Mon to Fri only, 21 April to 14 May 2009 at L2, 12 Loftus St, Sydney.
General Enquiries
02 9235 1533 or e-mail john@gallipoli.com.au
Media Enquiries
Emma Collison Publicity, 02 9362 9700, 0418 584 795, emma@emmacollison.com