A controversial Glover Prize winning artwork about Port Arthur will be the first Glover winner to go on show outside of Tasmania.
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Tasmanian artist Rodney Pople’s ‘Port Arthur’, which won the 2012 Glover Prize, will be displayed at Casula Powerhouse in Sydney from February next year.
Judges commented the work was “an extraordinarily brave painting” as it was one of the first pieces of artwork delving into the Port Arthur massacre in 1996.
Glover Prize curator Megan Dick said it was special to build relationships with galleries to showcase Glover Prize winners.
By sending Pople’s piece interstate for an exhibition, it opened up the possibility of showcasing the Glover collection outside of Tasmania, Dick said.
“The best work have a strong narrative."
Casula Powerhouse director Craig Donarski said the gallery was proud to present Pople’s prize-winning artwork as part of its Cultural Landscapes exhibition.
“This extraordinary painting serves as the key artwork that unlocks the exhibition’s premise for people,” Donarski said.
“In Cultural Landscapes. our curator Lizzy Marshall is looking at the impact of people on our landscapes, and ‘Port Arthur’ is a serious and ambitious painting of a landscape damaged by the horrific violence of Australia’s worst mass shooting.
“Powerful, beautiful and terrible all at once, it shows the power of landscape painting to tell a rich and multi-layered story. It forces you to stop, think and digest in a way that no other medium can.”
Glover Prize media director Mark Wells said the increasing recognition for the prestigious landscape art prize meant it had “come of age”.