Artist Lori Pensini wins the Portia Geach Memorial Award 2024
S. H. Ervin Gallery has named Lori Pensini as the winner of the 2024 Portia Geach Memorial Award for her work, The conversation #3. The oil on linen work in brown and tan hews, is an intimate portrait depicting the resting head of a women beside a reclining kangaroo.
Pensini says that her creative career began “as a young jillaroo painting landscapes and Animalia”. It is no surprise then, that many of her works depict animals in Australia’s semi-arid landscape. Pensini also paints portraits. Bringing these two subjects together has produced a portrait that feels both real and surreal – familiar but also unfamiliar.
Pensini says she is motivated to understanding animal decision making for conservation: “The conversation #3 opens up dialogue around our engagement with animals, the differences in the way we perceive and experience the same world and how we can balance the different realities to redevelop more sustainable models moving forward.”
The judging panel selected 58 works from 382 entries. Highly commended artists were Deirdre Bean for her painting, Rembrandt and Trevor (I can hear you), and Liz Stute with her self-portrait Melbourne’s old rattler. An exhibition of all finalists’ works is open for public viewing at the S.H. Ervin Gallery in The Rocks, Sydney, from Friday 25 October until Sunday 15 December.
The annual $30,000 Portia Geach Memorial Award is the pre-eminent portraiture prize for an Australian female artist for the best portrait painted from life of a man or woman distinguished in art, letters or the sciences. It was established by Florence Kate Geach in memory of her sister, artist Portia Geach and was first awarded in 1965.
S.H. Ervin Gallery has also announced the recipient of this year’s Evelyn Chapman Art Award as Illawarra-based artist, Nicole Kelly. The biennial award provides a $50,000 scholarship to support a young Australian painter working in oil or tempera, to further their artistic knowledge and practice internationally or in Australia. Kelly was selected from a finalist group of six artists who submitted up to three paintings and an education proposal to a judging panel comprising artist Ann Cape, artist Yvonne Langshaw, and artist and Head of the Royal Art Society of NSW Art School, Greg Hansell. Kelly intends using the scholarship to conduct research at Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark, on the Nordic tradition of painting, in particular the dark realism, symbolism and psychological space that exists within the Nordic landscapes.