Sally Robinson awarded the Gallipoli Art Prize

Picking this year’s winner was no small feat for the Gallipoli Art Prize judges, with the Anzac centenary marking 100 years since the Gallipoli Campaign.

Out of the 12 finalists, Sally Robinson was announced as the 2015 winner of the Gallipoli Art Prize, whose painting Boy Soldiers, captivated judges with her moving subject matter.

Commenting on her personal response to Gallipoli, Robinson remarked, “Like others who have travelled to the Gallipoli grave sites in Turkey, I was struck by how young a large number of the soldiers who died there were, some no more than boys.”

Imbuing the memory of the Anzac spirit within her practice, Robinson noted, “This painting commemorates those young lives lost. Over a backdrop of Lone Pine Cemetery, where many of these boy soldiers now lie, and under the Australian Military Forces rising sun emblem, I have stencilled the names and ages of the youngest soldiers to die in the Gallipoli campaign.”

Robinson was awarded $20,000 in prize money, the judges agreed that Boy Soldiers most strongly depicted the spirit of the Gallipoli Campaign as expressed in the Club’s Creed:

We believe that within the community there exists an obligation for all to preserve the special qualities of loyalty, respect, love of country, courage and comradeship which were personified by the heroes of the Gallipoli Campaign and bequeathed to all humanity as a foundation for perpetual peace and universal freedom.

Highly commended was awarded to Martin Tighe, for his painting The Burden, as well as Maryanne Wick for her work Greater Love Hath No Man.

Beginning in 2006 previous winners of the prize include Idris Murphy (2014), Peter Wegner (2013) and Geoff Harvey (2012).

The Gallipoli Art Prize
Image: Sally Robinson, 2015, acrylic on canvas, 122 x 122cm
Courtesy the artist and Gallipoli Art Prize