Sydney-based artist wins $100,000 prize with work drawing on Queer Archives
Sydney-based artist Jack Ball has won the lucrative Ramsay Art Prize with a work made from collage photographs assembled with rope, wax sculptures, stained-glass, copper pipe and sprinkled with charcoal and garden dirt.
Ball's installation Heavy Grit was selected from 22 finalists and more than 500 entries, a record for the $100,000 art prize which offers the same cash pool as the long-running Archibald Prize for portraiture.
The winning abstract work is part photography, part soft-form sculpture, and was inspired from a collection of scrapbooks held in the Australian Queer Archives at Darlinghurst. The journals contain newspaper clippings referencing transgender lives between the 1950s and 1970s.
Judges were impressed with the work's 'restless, kinetic quality' and its 'experimental processes and sophisticated creative resolve'.
The $100,000 Ramsay Art Prize is one of the nation's richest for young Australian contemporary artists aged under 40 years for a single work they have completed in the last 12 months. It is awarded every two years to diverse works of any medium.
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Perth-born Ball pinned and layered printed, irregularly shaped images to the wall, framed them behind amber-stained glass, as well as slung them over suspended ropes and copper pipe anchored by sand-filled purple anchors. The work first appeared as a centrepiece of their solo show at the Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts (PICA) in late 2024.
Ball doesn't literally show the pages but mixes the shapes and page edges from the journals and newspaper clippings with other more personal images to create what the gallery describes as 'a vivid interplay between the past and the present'.
Ball has previously said the slippery meaning of the abstract work compares with their own personal experience of gender identity.
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West Australian
an hour ago
- West Australian
Riding the New Wave: how Aussie movies won the world
When Australian New Wave movies burst on to world cinema screens in the 1970s, sceptical audiences were initially baffled by the broad accents and peculiar colloquialisms. Sunday Too Far Away, an iconic tale about male culture and loyalty in a 1950s shearing shed, was the first big hit of Australia's golden era of cinema but Americans were especially mystified by it, producer Matt Carroll remembers. "They recognised that Sunday was a great film but they didn't understand it," he says. "It was pretty incomprehensible to anyone who wasn't an Australian. At American screenings, you might as well have had it in Dutch." But French audiences were far more welcoming of the film at Cannes Directors Fortnight, thanks to the wife of an Adelaide car dealer who'd sold Carroll a Peugeot. "She said, 'oh yes darling, I know Parisian street slang, I'll translate it all for you (into subtitles)'," Carroll continues. "I remember sitting in the cinema and the first thing that comes up is somebody in the shearing shed says about the squatter, 'his shit doesn't stink'. When it was translated, the Parisian slang for that is 'he farts above his asshole'." In the huge screening room, "the whole audience just went crazy, absolutely crazy, and we got a huge sale to France", Carroll laughs. "It's the language of the bush," explains legendary Australian actor Jack Thompson, who portrayed the hard-drinking gun shearer, Foley. "There's a wonderful camaraderie expressed in that movie. Sunday says something much more profound about the Australian character than a number of other movies that examined our victories and failures." Thompson, who left home at 14 to work as a jackaroo in the NT, says "it was like a diary, it was just how people behaved - I remember, because as a teenager, I was in those sheds. "Sunday Too Far Away has a really important part in my career and in my memory; I'd worked on that wool press, I'd picked up that wool. I knew how tough it was … it was the world of working men." Thompson was a star of a slew of other New Wave movies, including Breaker Morant, Mad Dog Morgan, The Club and The Man From Snowy River. Carroll recalls also feeling well qualified to be involved in Sunday Too Far Away, which was filmed at Carriewerloo Station, near Port Augusta, and Quorn. "I grew up on a sheep property so I learned how to class wool. My honours thesis was in Australian shearing sheds. So when we needed to find a shearing shed, I knew exactly where they were," he says. "And Jack and I were sharing a house together, and I knew that he was a shearer, and I was there when the director said, 'I don't know where we're going to find shearers from'. And I said, 'Well, I know'. Thompson and Carroll recently visited Adelaide for a 50th anniversary screening of Sunday Too Far Away, staged by SA Film Corporation, which played a key role in the era. "The SAFC was an important beacon in the growth of the Australian film industry," says Thompson. "Tale after tale important to our understanding of ourselves was told and financed by that entity." The New York Times described Australian New Wave as "capturing a moment of freedom and abundance that was over almost before we knew it" and "possessing a vitality, a love of open space and a propensity for sudden violence and languorous sexuality". "That's me," says Thompson, now aged 84, deadpan. "Used to be, mate," laughs Carroll, 80. As a young actor, it was like "riding the crest of a wave, it was stunning", says Thompson. "There was indeed a very focused vitality, a unique charm, unlike anything else at the time." Carroll, who also produced Breaker Morant and Storm Boy for SAFC, says the 1970s was a remarkable period for Australian movies. "More than 220 films, that's more than 20 films a year. And when you read the titles, it's just staggering," he says. "We never had another period like that, with the inventiveness and the creativity." The SAFC's second feature, the enigmatic and menacing Picnic at Hanging Rock, which also turns 50 this year, became an icon of Australian cinema. "The great thing that happened after that is that Margaret Fink made My Brilliant Career, and the Americans understood it," says Carroll. "And then Breaker Morant came along and they clicked with it and it had huge results, and then the second Mad Max was a giant hit. So those three films were key to opening up the American market." Thompson notes that Australia made the world's first feature-length narrative movie, The Story of the Kelly Gang in 1906, "and we had a vital Australian film industry in the silent era up to 1927". "Hollywood and the American investment in theatre chains here was able to dominate the Australian film industry, and essentially, between 1930 and the 70s, nothing much happened in Australian cinema," he says. While Sunday Too Far Away was New Wave's first commercial success, 1971's Wake In Fright is widely regarded as the era's opening film. It was Thompson's first movie and the last for veteran character actor Chips Rafferty, who died of a heart attack before it was released. It screened at Cannes and received favourable responses in France and the UK but struggled at the Australian box office. It's the story of a teacher waylaid in a mining town where a gambling spree leaves him broke. Amid a haze of alcohol, he participates in a gruesome kangaroo hunt and is also subjected to moral degradation. It ran for just 10 days in Sydney, and 14 in Melbourne, Thompson recalls, "and people were saying 'that's not us', despite the fact the book was written by an Australian". "Because when we were seen on screen (previously), we were seen as these pleasant caricatures, we weren't used to seeing it and we didn't want to see it," he says. During an early Australian screening, when a man stood up, pointed at the screen and protested "that's not us!", Thompson famously yelled back "sit down, mate. It is us".
Perth Now
2 hours ago
- Perth Now
Riding the New Wave: how Aussie movies won the world
When Australian New Wave movies burst on to world cinema screens in the 1970s, sceptical audiences were initially baffled by the broad accents and peculiar colloquialisms. Sunday Too Far Away, an iconic tale about male culture and loyalty in a 1950s shearing shed, was the first big hit of Australia's golden era of cinema but Americans were especially mystified by it, producer Matt Carroll remembers. "They recognised that Sunday was a great film but they didn't understand it," he says. "It was pretty incomprehensible to anyone who wasn't an Australian. At American screenings, you might as well have had it in Dutch." But French audiences were far more welcoming of the film at Cannes Directors Fortnight, thanks to the wife of an Adelaide car dealer who'd sold Carroll a Peugeot. "She said, 'oh yes darling, I know Parisian street slang, I'll translate it all for you (into subtitles)'," Carroll continues. "I remember sitting in the cinema and the first thing that comes up is somebody in the shearing shed says about the squatter, 'his shit doesn't stink'. When it was translated, the Parisian slang for that is 'he farts above his asshole'." In the huge screening room, "the whole audience just went crazy, absolutely crazy, and we got a huge sale to France", Carroll laughs. "It's the language of the bush," explains legendary Australian actor Jack Thompson, who portrayed the hard-drinking gun shearer, Foley. "There's a wonderful camaraderie expressed in that movie. Sunday says something much more profound about the Australian character than a number of other movies that examined our victories and failures." Thompson, who left home at 14 to work as a jackaroo in the NT, says "it was like a diary, it was just how people behaved - I remember, because as a teenager, I was in those sheds. "Sunday Too Far Away has a really important part in my career and in my memory; I'd worked on that wool press, I'd picked up that wool. I knew how tough it was … it was the world of working men." Thompson was a star of a slew of other New Wave movies, including Breaker Morant, Mad Dog Morgan, The Club and The Man From Snowy River. Carroll recalls also feeling well qualified to be involved in Sunday Too Far Away, which was filmed at Carriewerloo Station, near Port Augusta, and Quorn. "I grew up on a sheep property so I learned how to class wool. My honours thesis was in Australian shearing sheds. So when we needed to find a shearing shed, I knew exactly where they were," he says. "And Jack and I were sharing a house together, and I knew that he was a shearer, and I was there when the director said, 'I don't know where we're going to find shearers from'. And I said, 'Well, I know'. Thompson and Carroll recently visited Adelaide for a 50th anniversary screening of Sunday Too Far Away, staged by SA Film Corporation, which played a key role in the era. "The SAFC was an important beacon in the growth of the Australian film industry," says Thompson. "Tale after tale important to our understanding of ourselves was told and financed by that entity." The New York Times described Australian New Wave as "capturing a moment of freedom and abundance that was over almost before we knew it" and "possessing a vitality, a love of open space and a propensity for sudden violence and languorous sexuality". "That's me," says Thompson, now aged 84, deadpan. "Used to be, mate," laughs Carroll, 80. As a young actor, it was like "riding the crest of a wave, it was stunning", says Thompson. "There was indeed a very focused vitality, a unique charm, unlike anything else at the time." Carroll, who also produced Breaker Morant and Storm Boy for SAFC, says the 1970s was a remarkable period for Australian movies. "More than 220 films, that's more than 20 films a year. And when you read the titles, it's just staggering," he says. "We never had another period like that, with the inventiveness and the creativity." The SAFC's second feature, the enigmatic and menacing Picnic at Hanging Rock, which also turns 50 this year, became an icon of Australian cinema. "The great thing that happened after that is that Margaret Fink made My Brilliant Career, and the Americans understood it," says Carroll. "And then Breaker Morant came along and they clicked with it and it had huge results, and then the second Mad Max was a giant hit. So those three films were key to opening up the American market." Thompson notes that Australia made the world's first feature-length narrative movie, The Story of the Kelly Gang in 1906, "and we had a vital Australian film industry in the silent era up to 1927". "Hollywood and the American investment in theatre chains here was able to dominate the Australian film industry, and essentially, between 1930 and the 70s, nothing much happened in Australian cinema," he says. While Sunday Too Far Away was New Wave's first commercial success, 1971's Wake In Fright is widely regarded as the era's opening film. It was Thompson's first movie and the last for veteran character actor Chips Rafferty, who died of a heart attack before it was released. It screened at Cannes and received favourable responses in France and the UK but struggled at the Australian box office. It's the story of a teacher waylaid in a mining town where a gambling spree leaves him broke. Amid a haze of alcohol, he participates in a gruesome kangaroo hunt and is also subjected to moral degradation. It ran for just 10 days in Sydney, and 14 in Melbourne, Thompson recalls, "and people were saying 'that's not us', despite the fact the book was written by an Australian". "Because when we were seen on screen (previously), we were seen as these pleasant caricatures, we weren't used to seeing it and we didn't want to see it," he says. During an early Australian screening, when a man stood up, pointed at the screen and protested "that's not us!", Thompson famously yelled back "sit down, mate. It is us".
Sydney Morning Herald
3 hours ago
- Sydney Morning Herald
‘Grave robber' posed for the cameras as he pillaged human remains
The collecting of human remains on an almost industrial scale began in the 19th century and continued long into the 20th. One of the museums most active in collecting human remains was the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC, and it was a partner in the expedition to Arnhem Land, along with the National Geographic Society. Frank Setzler was constitutionally incapable of entering an Aboriginal burial ground without thinking about how to rob it. He had form on this front, having collected many remains of Native American people earlier in his career. They were all accessioned into the Smithsonian's physical anthropology collection, one of the largest collections of human bones in the world. It is a sign of his brashness that he allowed a colleague to film his 'grave robbing', as other scientists on the expedition called it. Captured on celluloid, Setzler's actions are repellent yet compelling. Watching it now in the 21st century, with the old 16-millimetre footage converted into a digital file, it is easy to stop and start the film, or to magnify it until the image dissolves into a pixelated blur. In making the film, Setzler transformed the fleetingness of the theft into something that would last forever. His handwritten diary is as brutally candid as the film. He frankly acknowledges his duplicity towards the Bininj, as the people of west Arnhem Land call themselves. In an entry some weeks earlier, he recorded the moment he first spotted the bones. At that stage he was still getting his bearings on the hill. When a Bininj guide showed him around, he could hardly believe the abundance of human remains. But he kept his thoughts to himself: 'I paid no attention to these bones as long as the native was with me'. By the time he was ready to take the bones, he knew the site well, having spent some weeks on the plateau excavating for stone tools. Before he took the bones, he liaised with the expedition's American photographer Howell Walker, who agreed to join him on the plateau and shoot both still and moving footage of their acquisition. The film shows how they tried to make the theft a pedagogical performance, presumably to give it scientific credibility. Setzler at one point can be seen lifting and handling a skull. He points out distinctive features and then slots its jaw in place before presenting to the camera its largely toothless grin. The final seconds of the bone stealing show a glimpse of distant scenery. There is a strip of land, the grass yellow-brown. Further away lies the gleaming billabong and beyond it the mission dwellings. The sequence ends when Setzler and the expedition Australian guide Bill Harney (who suddenly appears from nowhere) cross the frame. Manhandling the now lidded crate, they disappear from the picture. The film is jarringly out of time. It stinks of the body-snatching of the 19th century. Yet we see it through the medium of cinema, that most 20th-century of art forms, and in colour no less. Another disconnect is the lack of soundtrack. We tend to expect that a colour film will have audio, but without the lecture that once accompanied it, there is nothing but deadly silence. No voice. No birdsong. Everything is mute. This sequence is part of the National Geographic Society documentary film Aboriginal Australia. Exhibited only in the US at conferences and in lecture halls, it communicates the story of the 1948 expedition to Americans. Outtakes – often disposed of by production houses – have in this case survived and they tell a most fascinating tale. Not only did Setzler perform the theft for Walker's camera, but he re-performed it in various ways, actively experimenting with his presentation. In the footage intended for public exhibition, he assumes the role of a serious field scientist making a significant discovery. That is very different from a take in which he hams it up as a madcap explorer. In that sequence, he marches into frame and feigns astonishment as he 'discovers' the very bones that he first saw weeks earlier. With cartoonish gesticulations, he signals to the out-of-frame Harney to come and look. Not until Harney is fully in view and enacting his own surprise does Setzler begin to reap his grim harvest. Amidst the jumble of takes and retakes, we see him at one point returning a skull to its crevice so he can perform the theft in a different way. Sixty years later, having recently obtained copies of the film from the National Geographic Society, I sat with the eminent elder Jacob Nayinggul on his veranda in the Banyan Camp at Gunbalanya, watching this material on a laptop. He, too, was silent – silent with rage. As the film reveals, Setzler became brasher and bolder as the expedition neared the end. His personal diary reveals pride in the ruses he went to in avoiding the scrutiny of locals. To provide manpower on his digs for stone tools, which occurred in rock shelters on Injalak (conveniently close to the ossuaries), two teenagers from the mission were assigned to him as archaeological assistants. One was Jimmy Bungaroo, who would become a well-known community leader in Maningrida later in life. The other man was Mickey (whose full name never appears in the expedition records). The pair can be seen in expedition films and photos, sifting soil that throws up great clouds of dust. Setzler supervises, wearing a protective mask. But there were no masks for the two youngsters who were actually performing the hard labour. The heat of those days was crippling. Setzler estimated that inside the tents, the temperature reached 110 degrees Fahrenheit (43.3 degrees Celsius) during the day. Outside, the air was thick and stagnant. The period known to Territorians as 'the build-up' had begun. High temperatures are matched with high humidity, a sure signal that the wet season is on its way. In these conditions, it is little wonder that Setzler's workers required a siesta after a morning spent shifting and inhaling dirt. This provided the opportunity to acquire another cache of bones, as Setzler explained. 'During the lunch period, while the two native boys were asleep, I gathered the two skeletons which had been placed in crevices outside the caves. These were disarticulated ... and only skull and long bones. One had been painted with red ochre. These I carried down to the camp in burlap sacks and later packed in ammunition boxes.' On November 1 it rained. The wet season was nigh. Setzler had discovered more bones that he would have stolen, but he had nothing to pack them in. Even so, he had garnered a rich harvest. He carefully 'painted the ammunition boxes containing skeletal material and numbered them consecutively after my personal box numbers'. He screwed them shut and noted: 'These will go to US without opening in Sydney'. They were ready for transportation to their eventual destination, the Smithsonian Institution in Washington. There they would remain for the next 60 years.
