In a spectacular win for multi-disciplinary art, Roberta Joy Rich’s profound and layered video installation Though Buried, They Echo has captured the esteemed $20,000 main prize at the Footscray Art Prize 2023. This trailblazing installation tactfully positions the faces of former racist policy makers—their imprints still informing Australian and South African colonial law—below the gallery floor.
Chosen from 43 finalists and an original pool of over 500 submissions from both Australia and international Aussie creatives, Roberta’s creation convincingly engages not just the observer, but the institution itself. The piece will be on display at Footscray Community Arts from 15 July to 17 September as part of a comprehensive takeover of the venue.
The winners, selected by a panel including University of Melbourne Art Museum Associate Director Charlotte Day, Artist and Curator Phuong Ngo, and National Gallery of Victoria’s First Nations Art Curator, Shonae Hobson, were praised for their ingenuity.
“The success of Roberta’s work is not just the power of its subject and elements,” Charlotte Day commented, “but how she has implicated us as viewers of the work—we walk over it and then are encouraged to look at what is under our feet and almost peripheral – just out of view.”
A diaspora southern African raised on Wathaurong country, Roberta frequently echoes histories linked to her cultural identity and experiences, emphasising oral connections via communal knowledge systems.
Apart from the main prize, three other category prizes were granted. The Maribyrnong Council presented the $10,000 Local Acquisition Prize to subversive needlepoint artist Jessie Deane for her piece The Big Build. This engaging depiction of the West Gate Tunnel build celebrates the paradoxes between handmade and industrial, masculine and feminine, rigid and malleable.
Meanwhile, artist Ammar Yonis impressed the Council with his bold work Salon Gâr, earning a Runner-up Local Acquisition Prize of $5,000. Abbra Kotlarczyk bagged the $2,000 Residency Artist Prize for her artwork Bridgehead (de)composition/Sweating the impurities, a tribute to her grandfather’s forced labours as a stone mason during WWII.
Young Artists Prizes of $500 were awarded to primary school student Grace Nguyen of Maribyrnong and secondary school student Jadyn Gregorio of Wyndham.
The biennial Footscray Art Prize, a partnership between Victoria University, Maribyrnong City Council, Footscray Community Arts, and the Rotary Club of Footscray, continues to showcase and promote creative and cultural accomplishments. A dinner and auction hosted by The Rotary Club of Footscray on Saturday 5 August is set to further boost funds for local youth projects.
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