Martin King has been announced as a Finalist in the National Works on Paper Prize 2024. The 2024 exhibition will be held at Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery from 31 August – 24 November and the winner of the 2024 National Works on Paper prize will be announced at the exhibition launch on Saturday 31 August.
With a long and rich history, NWOP attracts leading contemporary artists from across Australia working in the fields of drawing, printmaking, digital prints and paper sculpture. NWOP supports and promotes Australian artists working on or with paper.
Dates: 31 August – 24 November, 2024
Location: Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery, Civic Reserve, Dunns Road, Mornington, VIC 3931
Artist Statement:
In diary of lost souls, pages_21, 22 a white-faced owl stares out from the open
book’s pages as it rests upon a sickle moon. Surrounded by skulls, silhouetted bird
forms and other art historical references such as details from Albrecht Dürer’s
engravings, Saint Jerome in His Study (1514), and St Eustace, weaving history and
landscape into an image that is reminiscent of an illuminated manuscript, with
mesmerising use of pattern, mystical motifs and aura of the sacred. Human mortality,
the transience of life and the meaninglessness of earthly possessions are notions
alluded to in the recurrent vanitas image of the skull and bound up in the reference to
Saint Jerome. Perhaps I am holding out hope that humanity’s capacity for brilliance
and wisdom, as symbolised by the book and the owl will be our salvation in the face
of environmental malaise.
Image: Martin King, ‘diary of lost souls, pages 21, 22’, 2022, graphite and watercolour on drafting film and paper, 220x130cm
