Adelaide Hills Landscape Arts Prize 2021
Finalist Exhibition
DECEMBER 11, 2021 - FEBRUARY 13, 2022
a biennial arts prize celebrating the Adelaide Hills
presented by Hahndorf Academy
ADELAIDE HILLS LANDSCAPE ARTS PRIZE – $10,000
The Adelaide Hills Landscape Arts Prize is a biennial now acquisitive contemporary art prize, established in 2017 by the Hahndorf Academy. This arts prize celebrates the Adelaide Hills region and South Australian artists with a Finalist Exhibition at Hahndorf Academy.
South Australian artists are invited to present work that engages with and interprets the Adelaide Hills and the diversity of the landscape. We invited artists to interpret their experience of the Adelaide Hills in ways that highlights and captures their awareness of its dynamic and diverse environment and landscape – natural, rural or urban – and its ever-changing seasons.
Finalist Artists Adelaide Hills Landscape Arts Prize 2021 Exhibition
Carole Bann, David Braun, Liz Butler, Graeme Charlton, Elizabeth Close, Daniel Connell, Philip David, Alex Frayne, Harriet Geater-Johnson, Cecilia Gunnarsson, Marieka Hambledon, Sally Heinrich, Alexandra Hirst, Anthony Ingram, Jean Kenny, John Lacey, Simone Linder-Patton, Lisa Losada, Sarah McDonald, Phillip McGillivray-Tory, Christopher Meadows, Romany Mollison, Robert Roennfeldt, Regine Schwarzer, Cynthia Schwertsik, Lise Temple, Datsun Tran, Sonya Unwin, Roland Weight, Sheila Whittam, Georgina Willoughby, Simone Wise, Henry Wolff
Sonya Unwin winner of the Adelaide Hills Arts Prize 2021
Sonya Unwin – Windswept Acrylics on canvas, 2021
The aged Apple Orchard at Lenswood extracts something deep within. A quiet consciousness envelops on arrival, thought becomes poetic and colour becomes a technical tool. Atop the Lenswood hill, overwhelming beauty is significant. I launched into creating paintings en plein air in February 2021, immersing myself in the entire detail.
By July I had passed my apprenticeship and August found me hitting my stride. Gradually the detail diffused and significant heroines emerged in the landscape; wind energy, solar power, air, rain and the soil on which I created my paintings. I have based my painting upon these protagonists.
Henry Wolf Highly Commended
Henry Wolff – When the earth crumbles and the sky collapses above me (from the project CARE)
Archival inkjet print, 2021 - $1100
The ongoing project ‘CARE’ navigates subjective experiences of care, compassion, and love to share with viewers tender gestural expressions of human connection. Fostering virtue and an ethical consideration of the individual’s responsibility and embeddedness in society, ‘CARE’ asks people to consider their own relationships and context to one another and place. Here we witness an act of cross-generational intimacy – as a mother is embraced by her young children. This act takes place within the backyard of their Adelaide Hills home. Domestic yet wild, this is their first family home. Grounded by natural space, the figures gesture suggests structural form. It’s as if they might be building a house from their own bodies, alluding to processes involved with creating a home. This work articulates a different perspective on landscape, a more intimate one that considers our impact and connection to place.