We would like to extend big congratulations to Alexandra Baxter on winning ‘The Flying Arts ‘Take Flight Art Award’ through the Queensland Regional Art Awards 2022.
We are very excited to sponsor this prize which offers a $1,000 non-acquisitive cash prize for artists aged 15 – 25 years, as well as $1,000 in-kind career development opportunities, including editorial promotions and a career consultation with Onespace Gallery Director, John Stafford.
Baxter describes the winning artwork: “I know how you must feel, Brad. investigates how popular historical media might relieve the young contemporary artist of their simulated engagement with the world – of saudade: nostalgia or longing for a lost nature. Through the reframing of found images of the mid-century modern man of leisure – the Golfing Gentleman, the artist looks to realise how his seduction endures. Attempting to consciously unbind from the digital system or come closer/see more clearly the illusory history, the artist reaches for old imaging technologies and printing processes whose outcomes paradoxically condemn/recover, romanticise/vilify the Golfing Gentleman. I know how you must feel, Brad. is most concerned with how historical media fashions a nuanced form of nostalgia that is negative and regressive, but also tempting, alluring, handsome. Above each blueprint sits another, less obvious in its physicality, requiring ultraviolet light to be seen. What is visible romances, what is unseen attempts sensibility.”
Artwork: I know how you must feel, Brad, 2021, cyanotype and screenprint on cold pressed paper, 22 x 0.08 x 22cm. Photographer: Louis Lim
