This year our Peoples Choice sponsors Derivan have generously provided two Prize Packs, enabling us to consider both Adult and Youth categories. A particularly charming illuminated triptych has taken out this year’s GreenWay Art Prize (Adult) People’s Choice award.
Peaceful Luminance (1, 2 and 3) by Rita Orsini has been voted the audience favourite both by those who visited the exhibition in real life, and those who experienced it virtually through our online catalogue.
Rita Orsini is a painter and object designer. In 2009, she decided to push the boundaries of traditional painting into an exciting luminous form, and developed an original and innovative concept - the ‘Orsini Lights’, turning her paintings into functional artist-made lamps. When lit, the paintings provide another perspective of the same scenery. Rita explores the theme of light and transformation, as a reflection on identity, ecological and social narratives.
In this triptych, Rita depicts her local scene and the peacefulness provided by the Greenway in the middle of the city and under the magnificent inner-west skies. Her work features the cycle and walking paths, the local bird life (including the pied oystercatcher, a threatened species), the revegetation along the tram line (including the Sydney Turpentine-Ironbark, listed as a Threatened Ecological Community), the 1920s Flour Mill transformed into a light-looking edifice, and the peaceful Cooks river in the distance.
Rita has been awarded a Prize pack of art materials from Derivan valued at $400
This year’s GreenWay Art Prize (Youth) People’s Choice award goes to Christian Brothers Lewisham student, Jermaine Maningo for his work The Bay Run. which he painted after studying the work of the Impressionists. Focussing on his local area, Jermaine used bright colours, and heavy brush stokes to capture the reflections and movement in the water along the Bay Run.
