Fleurieu Art Prize looking beyond the vista
Aug 30, 2013, updated Mar 17, 2025
While picturesque vistas still make an appearance, this year’s shortlist for the Fleurieu Art Prize is pushing the boundaries of what a landscape painting can be with some eschewing psychical “land” altogether.
The program for the October event, along with the shortlist of 123 works, was launched yesterday at Hugo Michell Gallery.
Some high profile artists, including David Bromley who were announced earlier as part of the record 1226 entires for the $60,000 prize, missed out on the shortlist.
Judges Nigel Hurst of London’s Saatchi Gallery, artist Michael Zavros and the Samstag Museum’s Erica Green, judged the entries online and will view the shortlist in person before deciding a winner.
Adelaide artist Robin Eley, who has recently exhibited in New York, is on the shortlist for his work Immersion, which features a figure in a sea of black.
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“My painting is not an identifiable place, it’s something I’ve created through artificially through the use of artificial objects, materials and artificial light to echo a place.
“Obviously it looks like liquid or water but it is just plastic garbage bags all linked together giving this organic flowing effect.
Eley said in the painting he was trying to address the seductive nature of the artificial things in life.
“It’s almost as much a psychological landscape as a physical one.
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“If you can win the Archibald without painting a face, which you can now, you can win a landscape prize without painting an actual traditional vista.”
Fellow Adelaide-based painter Nona Burden’s painting Veil is not of a real landscape.
Nona Burden, Veil
“Mine is a rather misty landscape it is really an imagined space, it’s not really anywhere specific, it’s somewhere I feel.
“It’s dealing very much with spiritual responses to landscape and the effect of light and distance.”
Likewise, she believes while “landscape has quite a strong tradition, its lends itself to pushing boundaries pretty well”.
Tom Buchanan, who’s painting Landscape Lost looks at the duality of place verus the built environment, said it was important to push the boundaries.
“We are not trying to paint a vista we are trying to push the idea of what a landscape could be; it could be a cerebral landscape or a psychological landscape and I think that is really important.
The event, which runs from October 26 to November 25, will exhibit in several wineries and galleries across the Fleurieu, centred around McLaren Vale.
These will be supported by an invitational sculpture exhibition, a youth sculpture commission at Wirra Wirra and an invitational landscapes exhibition on display at Adelaide Airport.
See the full program at the Fleurieu Art Prize website.