I've neglected to take note of the Blake prize the 2004 winner, Pieta (Darfur) by Aña Wojak. 2007 saw the award of the 56th Blake Prize for Religious Art to Shirley Purdie for her "Stations of the Cross" (213x152, ochre and pigment on canvas) The judges described the work as

simply delicious in colour, texture and feeling. It is a marvellously realised painterly journey that recreates the stories told to the artist in childhood of the Stations of the Cross in Warmun country using a breathtakingly beautiful natural ochre pallette made from the earths eroded from the very Kimberley rocks whose mobile shapes enclose and frame the vignettes of story. A solidly honest, confident, and true painting it becomes a meditation on travelling within the artists country following a remembered and cherished biblical journey of suffering and pain towards redemption, and perhaps as well asks us to reflect on loss, pain and the journeys we all need to make towards each other.

The narrative is rendered in traditional ochre paint using the visual language of the Gija artists of Warmun. The relationship between the Gija people of Warmun and the Catholic community is a longstanding and rich, bringing together the traditional spirituality of the Gija people with Catholic teaching -- a dialogue between the Ngarrangkarni (Dreaming) and the Bible as the basis for a new worship and new art.

I appreciate the deep spirituality behind Purdie's painting, but I don't find it engaging as a work of art. Not many of the 2007 entries did. This photograph by Paul Green and Homi Vessal made me think .

In 2006 a fine untitled image (below) by Euan Macleod of a figure bathed in a pool of light with the rugged West MacDonald Ranges as a backdrop was the prize winning entry. Macleod said it's about confronting the wilderness, confronting the void. For me, it's quite a specific landscape, and even though I find it incredibly exciting, I don't know it very well, it's a very new landscape for me. What I love about it is the harshness, it's a pretty rugged place. You become very aware of your vulnerability.

Jacqueline Cavallaro's 2007 entry is certainly intriguing.

Co-winner of the 2005 prize, James Powditch, suspected his painting God is in the Detail (Intelligent Design) was not exactly the devotional work the judges had in mind. It's a rage against the forces of anti science and a lament for a world where the age of science has given way to an age of spin. "I think faith is a fantastic thing but I guess it's that crossover into politicians using it purely for political ends that worries me."

"I am pretty sure [they] didn't want me doing this." The work, which contrasts science books with philosophy books (and a cheeky picture of a bearded, bespectacled Queen Elizabeth) is a dig at proponents of 'intelligent design' -- the theory that suggests nature is so complex it can only be explained as the handiwork of a higher being.

The other 2005 co-winner was Louise Rippert, for her delicate leaf and paper collage Dance. The artist said Dance arose from her concern about the plight of humanity and the manipulation of religious fears by politicians for their own ends.

I wrote recently about the 2008 Archibald and Wynne prize winners. But it is a highly commended entry for the Archibald that is showing most powerfully how a fine portrait can bring the heart of a subject to the viewer and evoke public emotion. The SMH (2 Apr 08) says that:

When Vincent Fantauzzo began sketching his friend Heath Ledger for an Archibald portrait last year, he had no idea it would become an unofficial shrine to the young actor. But the picture has drawn record crowds, triggered a flood of emails and attracted six-figure offers. The portrait is odds-on favourite to win the People's Choice Award in a landslide and its popularity has helped the Archibald exhibition draw twice the number of visitors as last year. Fantauzzo, 29, has been overwhelmed by the public reaction to his painting. "I've had thousands of emails. I still get between 20 and 50 every day," the Melbourne artist says. "People say they feel like the painting is a tribute, something to remember him by, because it was more like him than his movies." . . . When Ledger died in January, Fantauzzo considered withdrawing the portrait from the competition, but was convinced by the late actor's mother to enter it. . . . He has been offered "hundreds of thousands" of dollars, but will honour his promise to give the painting to Ledger's mother, Sally. . . . The young painter didn't even think the portrait would be accepted by the prestigious prize when he first started work on it. "My confidence was a bit low so he [Ledger] kept trying to boost me up a bit. He kept saying, 'It's going to be great, it'll win'."

Today we much enjoyed Hall of Mirrors an exhibition at theNational Portrait Gallery of works by Anne Zahalka. As the Gallery notes, "Zahalka works in series form, rigorously establishing an idea across a number of works." The show was limited to portraits gathered from thirteen discrete series. This example is from the series, Resemblance (1987) created whilst Zahalka was on a residency in Germany, immersing herself in seventeenth-century Northern European painting

In the series Bondi: Playground of the Pacific, Zahalka restages iconic Australian images, such as The sunbather by Max Dupain.

Each year, debating the merits of the Archibald Prize for portraiture is something of an Australian national sport. This year's winner is Del Kathryn Barton for her You Are What Is Most Beautiful About Me, a self portrait with her five-year-old son Kell and two-year-old daughter Arella.

Always, though, it is the Wynn prize for best landscape painting of Australian scenery that fascinates me. This year's winner is Joanne Currie Nalingu for The river is calm. The concept is derived from her ongoing work and research into Maranoa cultural material and designs from the Mandandanji people of the Mitchell area in South West Queensland. She grew up in there in the 1960s, by the banks of the Maranoa River. Her painting captures the beauty and colour of the river and the desert. Ms Currie Nalingu has also worked on numerous public art projects.

I like The river is calm, its deep simplicity and, yes, calmness. Ms Currie Nalingu began painting in 1988 and has been a core member of the Campfire Group since the mid 1990s, developing skills and her professional profile. Her works are widely exhibited, including by the Fire-Works Gallery. While her style can be recognised as Aboriginal, her work is personal and individual, moving within cultures, honouring tradition and the present.

I'm attracted to this work of John Granville Gregory Still doubting painted in the 1990s and hanging in St. Philip's Church, Alderley Edge, Cheshire Bangor Cathedral in North Wales


Gregory emulates the style of Caravaggio's, The incredulity of St. Thomas (1601). Schloss Sanssouci (Staatliche Schlösser un Gärten) (below).

Besides their own profound meaning, these pictures remind us that the depiction of sacred images in contemporary dress and contemporary guise is a long-established tradition. Caravagio did so, as others did before him. To me, this seems more real than poorly drawn, even kitsch, attempts to imagine how century Palestine and its people may appeared.


The differing proportions of the two images are interesting. Gregory's seems stronger.