Basil Sellers Art Prize Call for Entries

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Call for entries is now open!

The Basil Sellers Art Prize is an acquisitive biennial award celebrating artistic excellence and supporting creative practitioners. Offering a prize pool of over $30,000 our prize champions 2D artworks in traditional mediums of painting, drawing, and printmaking (unique state).

Finalists from across Australia are eligible for the coveted $25,000 acquisitive award generously supported by Mr. Basil Sellers AM. The Eurobodalla Prize offers $5,000 in recognition of an outstanding local entry.

At the Bas, we recognise the significant investment of time, energy, money, and skill artists pour into art prizes even before their work is selected for exhibition. With this understanding, we are dedicated to making our prize as artist-friendly as possible. We acknowledge that exceptional art knows no boundaries. Artists from any background or region across Australia are encouraged to enter regardless of industry experience or prominence.

Terms and conditions

Make sure you read the terms and conditions before submitting your entry.

Save the dates

  • Call for entries opens: 15 July 2024
  • Call for entries closes: 27 September 2024
  • Opening and winners’ announcement: 6 December 2024
  • Exhibition: 7 December 2024 to 1 February 2025

Protests and Pranks: Student Activism and Pranks from UNSW Archives

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Photograph by Neilton Clarke of UNSW (AMCAE / City Art Institute / COFA) art students protest march through Hyde Park to CBD against earmarked introduction of student fees, c.1980-81.

Drawing on material from UNSW Records & Archives, Protests & Pranks traces a history of student-led protests and Foundation Day pranks at UNSW. The exhibition features posters, photos, videos, oral histories, and protest ephemera, including badges, t-shirts, and pamphlets.

Some of us might recognise ourselves in these photographs!

When:

26 February – 14 June 2024
 

Where:

Level 5 Main Library
Law Library
Paddington Library

Partner:

UNSW Records & Archives
 

Protests & Pranks, for the first time, will span all three UNSW Libraries. At UNSW Main Library, the exhibition shifts between global and hyperlocal protest movements. Protests & Pranks reveals how students mobilise to effect change, from the worldwide campaigns against the Vietnam War to student demonstrations in response to university policies. UNSW Law Library features tactical frivolity, the playful, non-compliant side of student resistance that manifested in pranks and stunts designed to provoke and challenge authority. The display at UNSW Paddington Library contains materials from recent climate rallies and political demonstrations to show how students utilise protests as a form of activism to bring about reform. 

The exhibition features photos, videos, oral histories, newspaper clippings, and protest ephemera, including posters, badges, and pamphlets. These materials help to piece together the shared concerns, movements, and cultural identity of UNSW.

Accessibility: UNSW Main Library, UNSW Law Library, and UNSW Paddington Library are wheelchair accessible. The exhibition will include large-text artwork labels and booklets, audio-described guides, and braille exhibition guides.

ORIGIN @ the Glasshouse, Port Macquarie

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Here are some images from the Opening of Sydney Printmakers exhibition ORIGIN at the Glasshouse, Port Macquarie. Above, Wendy Stokes preparing for the installation of her huge work, Guardians of Place.

Below, some photographs from the Opening event. The work looked great in the space. I will add further photos as they arrive.

In the foreground is Lea Kannar Lichtenberger’s work. Behind is Seong Cho’s and Wendy Stokes
Visitors viewing works by George Lo Grasso, Rafael Butron and Ruth Burgess.
From left to right: Evan Pank, No Pryo No Party, Caroline Craig, Weight: wait, Angela Hayson, Looking Back Through the Window, Anthea Boesenberg, Dark Legacy 1,2,3

To the Edges @ Manly Art Gallery and Museum

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Anne Starling - Nuclear Family
Anne Starling, Nuclear Family, 2020, linocut, woodblock, intaglio, relief, collage, 62 x 157cm.

Only six days to go to see this impressive exhibition!

Splash page image: Nathalie Hartog-Gautier, Looking for Paradise, Handmade raw cotton paper in collaboration with Darren Simpson from Creative Paper Tasmania and Penelope Lee, 12 books, unique state.

Artists in Conversation with the Exhibition Curator, Katherine Roberts, Manly Art Gallery and Museum: Joanne Gwatkin Williams

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Joanne Gwatkin Williams, Destruction, Linocut, 2021, 23 x 56cm

How does your work address the theme ‘To the Edges’?

For myself, this has been a very apposite theme for a number of reasons. The initial reason being direct experience of the bush fires in 2019/2020. I live on a hundred acres in remote NSW South Coast and watched the sky turn a livid brown and the sun turn an angry orange as the flames from the Currowan Fires crept closer, until we were surrounded and parts of our land a-flame. Myself, husband, dog, were literally ‘on edge’ for days and nights with fire hoses out, water pumps on and waking every couple of hours through the night to check that fallen and smoking trees had not re-ignited and started a fresh fire. So the first piece in the trio deals with this aspect of the theme.

The three parts of Joanne’s work, Destruction, Chaos and Adaptation.

The second piece ‘Chaos’ suggests that humanity’s greed, carelessness and poor behaviour has lead to chaos and disaster – a theme influenced by Mario Vargas Llosa’s book ‘The Storyteller’ – and here we see flood, fire, calamity inflicted on the world. Finally, man’s poor environmental record has brought man and planet to the edge of extinction – sea levels have risen and imagined, monstrous sea creatures dominate …

Joanne hand printing her work on Unryu Paper.

Can you describe the technical process you went through to achieve the finished work and what technical challenges you encountered along the way?

Technically, the pieces were reasonably straight-forward, any difficulties tended to be in cutting the detail and ensuring clarity. Perhaps my choice of fibrous Japanese Unryu paper – chosen because I felt the woody fibres would enhance the message of the pieces – did make it harder to get solid blacks where I really needed them and as a result I did end up printing them all by hand.

What do you see as the role of Sydney Printmakers for the next 60 years?

Like other successful printmaking groups, we can show the great expressive possibilities of our craft, the wonderful images that can be achieved using only print techniques; that printmaking skills are great tools for everyone to use either alone or in combination with other media.

How do you see the role of printmaking in general, contributing to the conversation about contemporary art practice.

Printmaking utilises numerous flexible and dynamic tools and can probably lead or assist art practice to move in a multitude of directions.

Chaos, linocut, 2021, 23 x 56cm

Exhibition Walk Through, To the Edges: 60 years of Sydney Printmakers, with curator Katherine Roberts of Manly Art Gallery and Museum.

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To the Edges is open for visitors again, but if you just can’t make it, here is a video walk through of the show hosted by the curator, Katherine Roberts. The exhibition closes on the 7th of November.

Thanks to Nathan Lewis and Matt Creswell for making the video.

Great news: To the Edges @ Manly Gallery is opening again!

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Angela Hayson - The Shelter of Ourselves
Angela Hayson, The Shelter of Ourselves, 2021, relief, monoprint, drawing, carborundum on Japanese kozo paper, 1.70 x 2.48cm

Sydney Printmakers 60th Anniversary Exhibition is opening again for three weeks from Tuesday 12th October to Sunday 7th November. The work has been sitting quietly on the walls for months but now we have another chance to see it.

There may be limits on how many people can enter the gallery at the same time, but its very exciting that we will have another opportunity to visit. Many of us did not get there the first time.

Get your friends together and go and have a look…….Its an excellent show.

Artists in Conversation with the Exhibition Curator, Katherine Roberts, Manly Art Gallery and Museum: Rafael Butron

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Continuing with our series of interviews with artists exhibiting in Sydney Printmakers ‘To the Edges’ at Manly Art Gallery and Museum, we now talk to Rafael Butron.

Rafael Butron, Phases of Isolation, copper plate engraving and woodcut, unique state, 54 x 147cm

How does your work address the theme ‘To the Edges’?

Recent unparalleled events Have caused many to live on the edge. The pandemic virus, caused by transmission from one person to another forced many of us into isolation quite rapidly, and for most people came fear and loneliness. Humans caused these events to unfold. The world’s temperature rises and our environment has been thrown. ‘Phases of Isolation‘ is a self portrait that explores three stages of separation, frustration, anxiety and depression. As we value our lives so should we also value the world we live in, by having compassion for one another and a duty of care for our world.

Can you describe the technical process you went through to achieve the finished work and what technical challenges you encountered along the way?

I usually engrave from a drawing on the plate itself using copperplate with a marker pen, then slowly engrave using an engraving tool called a Burin. The technical challenge is to remove all your training, which tends to make the print perfectly executed and use the innate artistic energy to achieve an image, much like action painting. My intention is to incorporate traditional printmaking techniques to create a unique work that has its own spirit.

Using the burin to engrave the copper plate.

What do you see as the role of Sydney Printmakers for the next 60 years?

Sydney Printmakers have and always will push printmaking to its limits and with every new member there is an opportunity to develop new engaging works that add to the diversity of the group and ensure its longevity for years to come.

How do you see the role of printmaking, in general, contributing to the conversation about contemporary art practice?

Printmaking has a role to play in contemporary art making as every printmaker has a unique approach to the creation of an image and the variety of mediums allows for an individual interpretation of the subject.