Perry Prize People's Choice Award 2024
28 Mar 2024
Congratulations to Barbie Kjar, this year's Perry Prize winner
We congratulate Tasmanian-born visual artist Barbie Kjar, winner of the $25,000 acquisitive Adelaide Perry Prize for Drawing 2024, for her work titled 'No expectations'
From over 300 entries, this year’s judge, Emeritus Professor Sasha Grishin AM, FAHA, selected forty finalists for exhibition. He commended the entries of Kaye Green, David Fairbairn, Suzanne Archer and Andrew Antoniou, before announcing Barbie Kjar’s work as the recipient of the 2024 award at the opening event on Friday 23 February at Adelaide Perry Gallery in Sydney.
At the end of the Exhibition of Finalists, the work voted 'most popular' by visitors to the Gallery will be awarded the 2024 People's Choice Award.
Barbie has exhibited extensively across Australia with solo and in group shows. She is the recipient of numerous grants and awards and is included in several public and private collections in Australia, New Zealand, USA, France and England. Important public collections include: the Australian National Gallery and Parliament House in Canberra, National Gallery of Victoria, Queensland University of Technology and University of Southern Queensland, Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery in Hobart and Artbank in Sydney.
Barbie Kjar has a Master of Fine Arts, from RMIT in Melbourne (2022).
Barbie has established a national and international reputation as one of the finest contemporary printmakers in Australia. Her beautiful, evocative imagery delicately harmonizes colour, form and the rituals of human behavior to create works that the viewer instantly responds to.
“ My drawing practice involves drawing people from life in my studio. I choose people to draw who have an inner creative world, who instinctively understand ideas and who excite me. I then work the preliminary drawings into more worked images and incorporate symbols which have a resonance with the subject. The drawing "No expectations" is modelled on a drawing of Tiani who had recently moved to Melbourne from China. He had the tattoo "no expectations" on his left shoulder. He was experienced in martial arts and one pose involved him looking down across his right arm. We don't know what he was looking at so the gaze takes us out of the drawing, I work with charcoal, graphite, inks and watercolour ”, said Barbie.
For more information about Barbie and her work, click here to visit her website.
