Awards bring fresh art talent to light

NEW artists were recognised at an inaugural awards ceremony last week.
The City of Greater Dandenong hosted the Emerging Artist Awards at Walker Street Gallery.
The awards aimed to provide a great opportunity for Australian-based artists who have been practicing their craft for less than five years and showed a strong commitment to furthering their professional art career.
The gallery’s visual and community arts co-ordinator David O’Halloran said the standard and diversity of work by young Australian artists was outstanding.
“The visual arts are a highly competitive field in which access to opportunity can be very difficult,” he said.
“We hope that we have assisted these artists in the early stages of their career.
“We also hope this competition will become a respected and firm fixture in the Australian art calendar.”
The winner of the Viridian Glass prize was South Australian artist Kristel Britcher.
The Deakin University exhibition prize was jointly awarded to David Ashley-Kerr and Todd Fuller.
Printmaker Sarah Harvey won the Burrinja exhibition prize with her work “Multiplication”.