| Galeria Sztuki Nowej Południowej Walii ogłosiła w środę, 25 lutego, laureata tegorocznej nagrody Packing Room Prize. Nagrodę wygrał artysta Paul Jackson za portret p.t. „Flacco’s chariot”. Portret przedstawia postać, którą stworzył aktor Paul Livingston.
Paul Jackson został nagrodzony sumą 500 dolarów oraz talonem tej samej wartości do wykorzystania w sieci sklepów Myer.
O przyznaniu nagrody Packing Room Prize decydują pracownicy galerii, którzy opiekują się pracami zgłoszonymi na coroczny konkurs.
Zdobywca głównej nagrody Archibald Prize zostanie ogłoszony 6 marca.
Oto bliższe informacje podane w oświadczeniu prasowym:
Flacco is known and loved for his appearances on television shows including Good News Week and two Flacco and the Sandman specials for the Ten Network, and The Big Gig and Daas Kapital for the ABC. His comic character is a verbal gymnast with a wondrously absurd, sorrowful take on life. Paul Livingstone has written a novel, The Dirt Bath and is also known from The Flacco Files, a cartoon for The Australian Magazine, which was regularly produced from 1998 to 2001.
Paul Jackson, the artist first came across Flacco when he saw him performing with the Sandman at Belvoir St Theatre in the mid-1990s. Comparing Flacco to a court jester, Jackson believes that the character “walks the knife-edge of success and failure every time he steps on stage with his risqué punning and cut-and-thrust dialogue, not easily embraced by the timid. Ironically, I found Paul himself to be a self-confessed timid man, so his suit may represent a suit of armour or perhaps a strait jacket.”
So what of Flacco’s Chariot? “Do we not all long to be transported by something in our lives that will carry a special significance and leave us with indelible fond memories?” asks Jackson. “Do we not carry within our ‘chariot’ the baggage that we think we need for the journey? Here I use the chair as a manifestation of the chariot and have adorned it with cartoons from The Flacco Files.
Born in Auckland in 1950, Jackson now lives in Sydney. He exhibits regularly in New Zealand and Australia in both solo and group exhibitions and is represented in many public and private collections around the world. This is his sixth time in the Archibald Prize. In 2006, he won the Archibald People’s Choice Award with a portrait of actor Garry McDonald battling depression.
Foto: www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/media
Oficjalna strona internetowa: www.thearchibaldprize.com.au | 
