2017 NSW Visual Artists Fellowship

Congratulations Fijian born Salote Tawale, from Newtown, who has been awarded the NSW Government’s inaugural 2017 Visual Artists Fellowship for later-career artists.

A contemporary artist, Tawale’s work uses performance, photomedia, drawing and installation to articulate her personal experience of race, class, ethnicity and gender while growing up in Suburban Australia.

The new NSW Visual Artists Fellowship supports the professional development of a mid-career to established NSW artist and includes $30,000, an acquisitive Artbank commission up to $20,000 and a residency at a NSW regional gallery.

Tawale aims to use the Fellowship to explore family oral histories and the Women’s Tattoo in Fiji, study under a curatorial mentorship in Europe, exhibit her art in London, make a new work during a residency at the Murray Art Museum Albury and develop a work for Artbank.

Arts NSW Executive Director Michael Brealey praised the Murray Arts Museum Albury and the Tweed Regional Gallery & Margaret Olley Arts Centre in the Northern Rivers for the live-in residency offered as part of the Fellowship, and the new commission also offered by the Commonwealth Government’s visual arts support program, Artbank. “Together with Arts NSW, these partners have helped create a new, impressively multi-faceted professional opportunity for a mid-career or established artist,” said Mr Brealey, who presented the Fellowship.

Alongside Tawale, the exhibition includes a selection of recent works by the finalists Khadim Ali, Linda Dement, Karla Dickens, Bianca Hester, Hiromi Tango, and Salote Tawale, these six artists were shortlisted for the award by an industry panel.

The 2017 NSW Visual Artist Fellowship Exhibition is the outcome of an Arts NSW Fellowship offered in partnership with Artbank. The purpose of the Fellowship is to assist mid-career/established visual artists build on their experience and consider significant opportunities to support personal development and career advancement.

EXHIBITION
2017 NSW Artist Fellowship Exhibition
1 December 2016 – 24 February 2017
Artbank, Waterloo

Images courtesy the artist and Arts NSW.