The Ellenbrook Open Art Award is a non-acquisitive art prize inaugurated in 2015 and now in its fifth year. The award is open to all Western Australian artists, aiming to promote, nurture and cultivate excellence in the visual arts for the Ellenbrook community.
Come and see the exhibition for yourself, there is a wealth of local artistic talent, right here in our own neighborhood! Vote for People's Choice, or buy something special for your home.
Vote and win!
Vote for your fave artwork. The artist who created the most popular artwork wins $250,
and each vote goes into the draw to win a $100 gift voucher at Ellenbrook Central.
Purchase an Artwork
Browse the artworks on display in the gallery and speak to our friendly staff about making a purchase.
Or view the work first in our online gallery.
Supports local artists, and adds that
personal touch to your home.
Images of artworks
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The Opening Event
Congratulation to the Winners
Ellenbrook Overall Prize: Eva Fernandez, with Dexter and Sinister
Judge's comments: This exquisitely aesthetic work explores the occupation of country by 19th century early European settlers, subverting pre-existing indigenous cultures and environment through use of metaphor. The strength of this work lies not only in its use of simple monochrome palette but also in its layered and implied meaning. Eva Fernandez seamlessly distills WA native fauna and colonial portraiture to assemble a momento-mori about dispossession and exploitation.
The City of Swan Award: Kelly Wilkinson, with The Little Gathering of the Knitted Pots
Judge's comments: These 3D small scale pieces connect a deep place narrative with an ephemeral materiality. The utilisation of recycled materials introduces an intriguing perspective on the traditional idea of natural weaving and object making. The work inverts the concept of functional object with a purely aesthetic art construct.
Prime Projects Award for Sculpture/3D: Liz Arnold, Reef Bowl
Judge's comments: A small scale 3D textile work that is bold through its use of colour. It is an intimate piece, inviting close inspection reflecting the artist’s connection with the reef, and it is an elegant form combining richly coloured applique textiles, evocative of marine life forms.
Ellenbrook Award for Painting: Samuel Pilot-Kickett, Balga Dreaming
Judge's comments: This is a complex work that combines multiple painting conventions from indigenous dot painting work through to through to an almost science fiction art representation of celestial forms. The work is deep intriguing and continually holds the viewer, interrogating its intention and execution. Balga Dreaming is a stunning figurative painting with powerful associations to Balga country and the living culture of Aboriginal people.
Metropolitan Picture Framers Award for Works on Paper: Margaret Francis, Regeneration
Judge's comments: This Watercolour lifted off glass shows a technically high level of skill. The use of palate reflects the artist regeneration with the landscape.
Mixed Media: Enid Twiglet, The Silence Come After
Judge's comments: This small work draws the viewer and disrupts the preconceived expectation that the work is produced through pen and ink or similar processes. It is executed through fine stitching, but subverts conventional expectations of what a stitched or woven form should be. It appears superficially aesthetic, but deals with a potentially disturbing take on a familiar subject. Enid Twiglet integrates a finely made sewn textile and dark mirrored frame to suggest a macabre redemptive narrative.
LWP Award for Photography: Richard Kabzinski, Inverted Light
Judge's comments: A simple but powerful use of photographic and post production techniques to disrupt the viewer. The triptych sequence suggests and evolution of a form and a temporal element, whilst the inverted light marks begin to replicate the idea of contemporary mark making as if created through a drawing process.
Printmaking: Leon Allen, Stray Girl Visiting
Judge's comments: This work exhibits a sophisticated combination of textural forms and lines of force. The artist has interestingly divided the view into smaller elements, partly suggesting that the scene is viewed through a window despite detail of a window being absent. The linear elements are further reflected in strong perspective leading the eye past and around to the cat; the subject of the work. A great work utilising chiaroscuro to its maximum.
Jessica Shaw Youth Award: Rory Charles, Wandjina
This is a strong peace despite its diminutive size which is compositionally bold and aesthetically strong and culturally nuanced. It illustrates the power of using a limited palette such as the white and black.
HIGHLY COMMENDED
High commendation for mixed media: Carol Rowley, Stratum 6.
This technically proficient work explores layers of place and identity through its use of texture and overarching graphic form.
High commendation works on paper: Katie McCabe, Freeman
This work displays an extraordinary technical proficiency and maturity and in a conveying gesture and composition.
High commendation photography: Chryssi Haramis-Niaouris, Road Trip
The work is compositionally compelling, resonating towards a focal point with by creating a sense of movement.