Art prizes have long been seen as being effective in developing a regional art collection. Many regional galleries throughout the country owe their existence to the foresight of communities decades ago who identified an art collection as an important barometer of the healthiness of their city or town.

Lismore Regional Gallery is no exception, with our permanent collection being stimulated from 1954 with the hosting of the Lismore Art Prize. This story, eloquently told in 2004 by Rebecca Rushbrook – lismoregallery – makes for a fascinating history of the development of one of the state’s oldest regional galleries.

Lismore Regional Gallery continues to use an art prize as an important way to building this important cultural asset. The Hurford Hardwood Portrait Prize builds on the success of the Northern Rivers Portrait Prize, started in 2010. Contrary to many perceptions, this prize was always open to artists across the country, but was restricted to the subject having to have a connection to the Northern Rivers. This was recently changed, such that entrants now can enter portraits irrespective of the subject’s connection to Northern Rivers.

Andrew and Gaela Hurford (Hurford Hardwood) with Fiona Lowry in front of the winning work by Paul Ryan, Blue Mountains Noah (Noah Taylor).

What this has meant is that a greater range of artists are now entering, and significantly putting Lismore Regional Gallery, and this prize into wider recognition. It also means that the development of the collection is being more widely canvassed. In talking to some of the 40% of local artists who are in the prize, for them it also means that their work is being seen among a very different group of artists.

On Saturday 31^st October, 2014 Archibald Prize winner Fiona Lowry named Wollongong artist Paul Ryan as the winner of the Hurford Hardwood Portrait Prize with his portrait blue mountains noah – a portrait of Noah Taylor.

The painting is from an ongoing series of the London-based Australian actor, executed over found paintings. In this work, Ryan positions Taylor over a combined landscape of the Blue Mountains, almost imagining the actor in a filmic scene. Ryan has long been interested in the idea of Australian colonialism, the landscape, and the ongoing ramifications of white settlement. Ryan has been a finalist in the Wynne, Sulman and Archibald Prizes at the Art Gallery of NSW numerous times since 1989. The winning work will now enter the permanent collection of Lismore Regional Gallery.

Lowry also named Lismore artist Bryce Anderson as the winner of the ‘Northern Rivers subject’ category, with his painting Bathed in Doubt (Self Portrait). This $1,000 non-acquisitive award was sponsored by Walters Solicitors.

The winner of the People’s Choice Award, sponsored by the Far North Coast Law Society, will be announced on Friday November 27.

For more information go to: lismoregallery The exhibition is open until Friday November 27

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