InReview

Tuesday, Jul 2, 2013

Waterhouse Prize artists tackle hot issues

InReview

Suzie Keen

Tuesday July 02, 2013

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More than 100 finalists have been chosen for the 2013 Waterhouse Natural Science Art Prize, which has changed its name this year to encourage artists to explore scientific and topical issues such as pollution, climate change and habitat depletion.

Previously called the Waterhouse Natural History Art Prize and named after the first curator of the South Australian Museum, avid fauna collector Frederick Waterhouse, the prize is now in its 11th year.

The prize’s founder, SA Museum head of special projects Mark Judd, said that while it still embraced natural history art, the Waterhouse went beyond “science illustration”.

“The main reason for the [name] change is to encourage artists to address contemporary and issues of biodiversity, habitat depletion, climate change, physics, chemistry, palaeontology and others, and use their imagination to inspire and delight our visitors,” he said.

SA finalist Gretta Planchon Allen’s oil painting Cocoons, for example, is inspired by environment pollution and its impact on wildlife, depicting creatures cocooned within some sort of material.

The more whimsical The Art of Patience, by Victorian artist Kate Bergin, depicts a diverse collection of creatures sitting on top of and around each other with an old-fashioned telephone. “Like Beckett’s tragicomedy Waiting for Godot, we can imagine these characters variously resting, chatting or arguing, waiting for the call that will make sense of it all,” she said.

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Judd said the prize had seen a number of changes in its 11 years, including a lifting of the ban on any reference to people or “human influences such as cleared paddocks or birds on fences”.

The 2013 finalists include artists from throughout Australia and as far away as Italy and the United States, with categories comprising Paintings, Works on Paper, Sculpture and Youth. Their work will be displayed at the museum from July 20 until September 8, before going on tour to the National Archives in Canberra.