(“A
Young Man”. Oil on linen canvas by Heather Gourlay-Conyngham)
Excitement is mounting in the Northern
provinces for the SPI National Portrait Award exhibition with works by the
selected top 40 portrait artists to be opened at the UJ Art Gallery on October 23,
2013. This award initiated by Sanlam Private Investments in collaboration with
the Rust-en-Vrede Gallery in Durbanville in 2012 attracted an unanticipated 1,783
entries by 1,200 artists for the final adjudication earlier in 2013.
A prize of R100,000 was awarded to Heather
Gourlay-Conyngham. Born in Durban in
1956, Gourlay-Conyngham now lives in Hilton in the KwaZulu-Natal Midlands. She
has worked as an art teacher and painter since graduating with a BA Fine Arts from
the University of Natal in 1978 and a Higher Education Diploma in 1980 from the
University of South Africa. Her paintings focus primarily on the human form.
Modelled on the London based National
Portrait Gallery, BP Portrait Award, the competition invited entries in any
medium with the exclusion of lens based media such photography, television and
film. There has been enough common understanding of the principle of what a “portrait” entails that made for an
exciting and animated process of selecting the 40 works for exhibition and to adjudicate which work was
worthy of the award.
The national touring exhibition will be
hosted by the KwaZulu-Natal Society of Arts during April 2014. In the meantime,
it can be seen at the University of Johannesburg Art Gallery from October 23 to
November 13, and at Stephan Welz & Co at the Alphen
Estate in Constantia, Cape Town, from November 26 to January 10 2014.
More information from the UJ Art Gallery, APK
Campus, Cor. Kingsway/University Road, Auckland Park in Johannesburg on 011 559
2099 or email: aedempsey@uj.ac.za
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