The 57th Blake Prize for Religious Art

Judges Comments

The Judges were deeply impressed by the diverse intentions of the artists who submitted – everything from an expression of lived experience, of spiritual commitment/journey, through to work that investigated the problems of religious ideology as they are played out through politics and culture in global life.

The winning work by Shirley Purdie is 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 work by Rodney Pople was highly commended. Pople is a great painter of luminosity – energised light. This painting burns slowly and gathers intensity the longer the viewer stays with it.

The work by Jumaadi was awarded the inaugural John Coburn emerging artist award. Like a broken- up and laid out manuscript, this painting engages us with multiple scenarios. Evoking the multiplicity of experiences and giving vignettes in the confusing lives of its actors, it references much in art as it does in life which causes one to pause, consider, and yet enjoy its street -wise comic -book illustrations , as well as its deft intelligence. Viewing this work, like judging the Blake prize itself ,was like sitting in a gallery of restless stories.
 
One judge commented: "I was moved by the way artists retell old memories [differently] and weave new stories with old strands, inviting me to wander across storyworlds and songlines. My hope is that those restless stories inspire restless retellings."