Canberra photographer Hilary Wardhaugh has been named 2024 Canberra Citynews Artist of the Year at the 34th annual ACT Arts Awards evening, held in the ANU Drill Hall Gallery on Tuesday, November 12.
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| Hilary Wardhaugh,
2024 Canberra Citynews Artist of the Year. Photo: Peter Hislop |
New ACT Arts Minister Michael Pettersson presented a certificate and cheque to the value of $1,000 to the artist’s son, Henry Gilmour, as she was interstate.
Wardhaugh, well-known in the Canberra community for her family portraits, is also a press and fine art photographer who was singled out by the judges in the Canberra Critics’ Circle for her provocative, innovative and creative artworks and endeavours.
Her #everydayclimatecrisis Visual Petition has gained international recognition and was also tabled in the Australian House of Representatives.
The critics also praised her passionate solo exhibition Monachopsis (meaning a persistent sense of being out of place) at Canberra Contemporary Art Space Manuka, and also A Meditation of Death.
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| Joel Horwood on stage in Ordinary Days |
Earlier in the evening, the Helen Tsongas Award for Excellence in Acting was presented by Canberra Theatre director, to Joel Horwood for his poignant interpretation of Konstantin in Seagull for Chaika Theatre and his empathetic performances in Queers for Everyman Theatre and Ordinary Days for Q the Locals.
The award is an initiative of the Tsongas family to keep alive the memory of the late Canberra actor Helen Tsongas Brajkovic.
The awards evening also featured the circle’s own awards, which went to:
Music
Louis Sharpe and the National Capital Orchestra
For creating and presenting a concert of exciting and energetic movie music to a capacity audience in their performance of Heroes and Villains - Music from the Movies.
Edward Neeman and Stephanie Neeman
For their extraordinary performance of a four-handed piano arrangement of William Bolcom’s The Serpent’s Kiss, a ragtime inspired work that told the story of Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden. This unique work was given a playful and thoroughly enjoyable performance, complete with foot-stamping, piano-slapping, unexpected vocalising and physical comedy.
Andrew Koll
For his conducting of the St John Passion for the Canberra Bach Ensemble, which brought out a glorious, nuanced performance. For devising and leading a thrilling concert featuring the three Bach Cantatas that he would later take to the Leipzig Bach Festival in Germany.
Luminescence Chamber Singers
For their world premiere performance of Andrew Ford’s song cycle, Red Dirt Hymns, performed at the Canberra International Music Festival. The crystalline voices of the six singers, in groups and as soloists, performed musical settings of Australian poetry, enhanced by Sammy Hawker’s subtle artwork.
Shortis and Simpson
For their original musical series, Under the Influence, in which the duo wove their own stories and music together with those of guest artists Keith Potger, Karen Middleton, DJ Gosper, Nigel McRae and Beth Tully, culminating in sessions with Mikelangelo and Fred Smith. This initiative proved a creative way of highlighting leading Canberra region popular musicians.
Theatre
Karen Vickery
For offering contemporary Canberra audiences a fresh look at Chekhov's dialogue through her erudite and at times colloquial reinterpretation of his play, Seagull.
Amy Kowalczuk
For her incisive, sensitive and powerful performance as Blanche DuBois in Free Rain Theatre's production of A Streetcar Named Desire.
Joel Horwood
For a moving and totally believable performance as the tormented Konstantin in Chekhov's Seagull, for Chaika Theatre.
Christopher Samuel Carroll and PJ Williams
For their perfectly matched, deeply psychological performances as the murderer Raskolnikov and the police inspector Porfiry in The Street Theatre's production of Crime and Punishment, adapted from Dostoevsky’s novel by Marilyn Campbell-Lowe and Curt Columbus.
Karen Vickery and Steph Roberts
For their tremendous double act as Elizabeth I of England and Mary Queen of Scots in Luke Roger’s production of Kate Mulvaney’s adaptation of Friedrich Schiller’s Mary Stuart.
Dance
Australian Dance Party
For Co_Lab:24, an engaging collaboration by dancers, musicians, lighting designers and visual artists, which drew on improvisation as a technique and which made use of a performing space in an experimental manner.
Nathan Rutups
For his stylish, aggressive choreography which eschewed dance steps in favour of evocative moves and attitudes to advance the storyline of Queanbeyan Players’ impressive production of American Idiot.
The Training Ground
For Wired, its full-length abstract contemporary dance work exploring the psychological implications of a true event. It was notable for the originality and excellence of its presentation, which showcased the technical accomplishment of the 18 dancers who executed the demanding choreography with exemplary confidence, precision and engagement, supported by outstanding lighting and technical effects.
Larina Bajic
For her dazzling performance as The Watcher in The Training Ground’s production of Wired in which she displayed extraordinary command of technique and characterisation in a series of demanding solos and duets.
QL2 Dance
For its presentation of Hot To Trot, a high quality, polished cohesive production incorporating a myriad of styles, music and lighting designs where young dancers impressed with their dedication and execution of their own and others' choreographic projects.
Musical Theatre
Queanbeyan Players
For its dynamic production of a difficult musical, American Idiot, which bristled with energy, flair and attitude, performed by a totally committed cast directed by Bradley McDowell, choreographed by Nathan Rutups and musical direction by Jen Hinton and Brigid Cummins.
Chris Zuber
For his pitch-perfect design and direction of the chamber musical, Ordinary Days, for Q The Locals, flawlessly cast, with musical direction by Matthew Webster and performed by Vanessa Valois, Joel Horwood, Kelly Roberts and Grant Pegg.
Free Rain Theatre
For its exuberant production of Billy Elliott, a demanding musical set in times of turmoil, directed by Jarrad West, choreographed by Michelle Heine with musical direction by Katrina Tang and Caleb Campbell.
Marcel Cole
For his impeccably researched and performed cabaret, Ukelele Man, about British entertainer George Formby and his wife Beryl, for which he was assisted by Katy Cole and directed by Mirjana Ristevski as part of the inaugural ACT Hub Canberra Cabaret Festival.
Visual Arts
Caroline Huf
For her digital video, Shipwreck, shown as part of the Abode exhibition at Tuggeranong Arts Centre in April and later at Canberra Contemporary Art Space, Manuka, in June. It explored, through beautifully staged imagery and wry commentary, the acute plight of refugees seeking a place of safety and the labyrinth of bureaucracy they need to negotiate.
Alex Asch and Mariana del Castillo
For their exhibition, Compression, at Beaver Galleries in September. Each of these two artists have created in their own individual way, works that are the result of a deep and sensitive experience of the Australian environment, yet together they have also created a potent dialogue that unites, deepens and enriches the exhibition experience.
Susie and Martin Beaver
For over forty years of showcasing the art of Australian craftspeople and artists to Canberrans at Beaver Galleries, exhibiting the work of probably thousands of craftspeople in the full range of materials. Objects and art works have been displayed in dynamic exhibition programs and they have represented their artists at Australian art fairs.
David Mac Laren
For over forty years of presenting the art of people working in wood to Canberra and its regions at Bungendore Wood Works Gallery and for showing us that furniture can be made for generations and still be functional, easy to live with and most of all, be attractive. The gallery he founded showcases the best of woodcraft available in this country and exhibits the works of many talented artists and makers.
Eva van Gorsel
For her imaginative and creative observations in photography, often combined in blended composites, beautifully displayed in high quality archival pigment prints that motivate viewers to pursue long-lasting cohabitation with the natural world, and, in particular her key part in the exhibition Emotional Landscapes I at ANCA Gallery in July-August.
Hilary Wardhaugh
For her ongoing and wide-ranging provocative, innovative and creative artworks and endeavours that include analogue and digitised lumen prints, cameraless lumagraphs, film photography and cyanotypes, in particular for her passionate solo exhibition Monachopsis at CCAS Manuka in March 2024.
Memoir/History
Andra Putnis
For Stories My Grandmothers Didn’t Tell Me, a work that seeks to bridge the distance between the present and the past and to balance a granddaughter’s search for connection with a writer’s search for stories. The author honours a family’s silences as much as its traumas to produce a work of compassionate moral reckoning.
History/Biography
Kate Fullagar
For Bennelong and Phillip: A History Unravelled, a dual biography whose bold reversal of the narrative expectation of history recasts a received idea of total divergence as an inevitable convergence. In this startling presentation, the relationship between these two emblematic figures renews the possibility of a shared history.
First Nations History
Craig Cormick and Darren Rix
For Warra Warra Wai, How Indigenous Australians discovered Captain Cook & what they tell us about the coming of the Ghost People. This is a collaborative project of generous and attentive listening, which honours and exemplifies the depths of First Nations oral storytelling and collective memory.
Poetry
Jeanine Leane
For gawimarra gathering, a work of unwavering force and clarity that voices the contradictions of post-referendum Australia. Leane meets our moment. Here is a poet at the height of her power.
