Tracey Moffatt and Juliana Engberg receive Australia Council Visual Arts Awards
Leading Artist and Curator win major art awards
Tracey Moffatt, one of Australia’s leading contemporary artists and Juliana Engberg, Director of the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA) Melbourne and Artistic Director of the forthcoming 19th Biennale of Sydney, were honoured for their contribution to the visual arts as recipients of the Australia Council Visual Arts Awards at a prize-giving ceremony at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) Sydney, Australia on Wednesday 6th of March.
Moffatt, who has come off the back of a hugely successful 2012, including the major solo exhibition of her work at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, was excited by the announcement. “I was so thrilled to be recognized and up there with talented and important names in the Australian art world.” Similarly, Juliana Engberg, whose recent appointment as Artistic Director of the 19th Biennale of Sydney has cemented her reputation as one of the most influential curators in Australia, said, “this is such an honour. It is my privilege to work on behalf of Australian artists and their amazing contributions to our culture.”
Tracey Moffatt, the 2013 Australia Council Visual Arts Award recipient:
Tracey Moffatt works within photography, film and video. Her art draws from multiple directions, including childhood, adolescence and popular culture. Dramatic and richly coloured, Moffatt often approaches these conceptual concerns in narrative forms, which have garnered her reputation as a masterful storyteller.
Since 1989, Tracey Moffatt has held numerous solo exhibitions in major museums around the world. Her short film Night Cries was selected for official competition at the 1990 Cannes Film Festival, followed by her first feature film, beDevil, in 1993. In 1997, she exhibited in Aperto at the Venice Biennale and at the Dia Centre for the Arts, New York in 1997/98.
Comprehensive survey exhibitions of her work have been held at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney (2003) and the Hasselblad Centre in Goteburg, Sweden (2004). In 2006, she had her first retrospective exhibition in Italy, at Spazio Oberdan, Milan. In 2007, Charta Publishers, Milan, published a monograph, The Moving Images of Tracey Moffatt. In that same year Moffatt was a recipient of the 2007 Infinity Award for art by the International Center of Photography, New York.
A solo exhibition of her films and videos was held in May 2012 at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Moffatt is represented in America by Tyler Rollins Fine Art, New York and Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney.
Juliana Engberg, the 2013 Australia Council Visual Arts Medal recipient:
As curator, writer, publisher and designer, Juliana Engberg has been described as ‘an impeccable eye wedded to a keen intellect’ by influential Artforum magazine. She has worked with some of the leading international artists of the last and this century and was recently announced as Artistic Director of the 19th Biennale of Sydney 2014, titled You Imagine What You Desire.
Engberg is currently Artistic Director of ACCA (Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne), where she has commissioned and curated numerous exhibitions, including: Pipilotti Rist: I Packed the Postcard in My Suitcase; Yael Bartana: TRILOGY; Nathan Coley Appearances; Mortality; Joseph Kosuth Texts for Nothing, Samuel Beckett in Play; Plenty Ought To Be Enough: Barbara Kruger and Richard Billingham: People Places Animals.
In 1999 she was the Artistic Director of the internationally acclaimed Melbourne International Biennial 1999 Signs of Life, and before accepting this commission was Senior Curator at the Museum of Modern Art (Heide), Melbourne, Senior Curator of the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne, Assistant Director of the Monash University Gallery, and Director of the formative contemporary art space the Ewing and George Paton Galleries, The University of Melbourne.
About the Australia Council and the Visual Arts Awards:
Celebrating its 40th anniversary this year, the Australia Council is the Australian Government’s arts funding and advisory body. The Australia Council through the Visual Arts Board each year presents the Visual Arts Awards, to acknowledge and honour the exceptional achievements of Australian artists and arts administrators who have made and are continuing to make an outstanding contribution to the development of the Australian art sector.
Media contact:
Julie Lomax, Director, Visual Arts
T +61 00 (0)2 9215 9169 / j.lomax [at] australiacouncil.gov.au
