We are thrilled to announce that Zoe Porter has been awarded the Performing Arts and Music Award at the Brisbane Portrait Prize.
Supported by the Lister Family Foundation, the Performing Arts and Music Award is open to portraits featuring sitters from the performing arts and music industries.
Titled ‘Billie the Acrobat’, the artwork depicts Billie Wilson-Coffey, an ensemble member of CIRCA who performs mesmerising aerial and acrobatics all over the world.
Porter elaborates on her connection with the sitter: ‘Within the watercolour I wanted to capture Billie’s grace and physical strength. We collaborated on a live drawing performance together and this artwork references part of that performance.’
Director of the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia and this year’s chief judge, Suzanne Cotter remarks on Porter’s winning artwork:
“Executed in watercolour and relatively small in format, this portrait has a monumental quality. The artist has worked with a performer as her subject, and the painting is both a stage, and staged. The competent and complex graphic quality of the work shows mastery of the medium of watercolour…the tactile effect is one of delicacy and almost evanescence, however the resultant work is formally invincible.”
We would like to thank the Brisbane Portrait Prize for acknowledging Zoe Porter and extend our congratulations to all awarded artists.
Image (First to Last): Zoe Porter, Billie the Acrobat, 2023, watercolour, 58cm x 61cm. Photo: Louis Lim. Courtesy of the artist and Onespace. Orientation Drawing performance, Brisbane 2018. Photo: Louis Lim. Courtesy of the artist. Submerged 2020, Brisbane. Photo: Cecilia Martin Courtesy of the artist.
