John Fries Memorial Prize 2012

Overview

The John Fries Memorial Prize at Gaffa Gallery features 20 emerging artists competing for a $10,000 prize. It's a 'pick and mix' of young contemporary visual artists — a spot of installation here; an abstract painting, a sculpture there — and worth visiting just to see the work of Philjames, who overpaints on the kind of daggy landscapes you might find for $15 at an op shop.

In …(to the tune of The Simpsons) he combines this style with installation to bind art history and contemporary pop culture in one long continuum. Bart Simpson appears to be inserted, regal and statue-like, into a traditional modernist painting. A fibreglass sculpture of Chairman Mao Zedong is cast in the shiny style of a Simpsons character, who looks onto the painting adoringly. In swapping the roles of cartoon icon (Bart Simpson) and newly merchandised historical figure, Philjames exposes the ways consumer culture creates and venerates unlikely heroes.

Make sure you drop into the excellent Gaffa gallery shop while you're there. It houses the wares of local contemporary sculptors and jewellery-makers, the kind of one-off stuff you just don’t see elsewhere.