NEWS
Glover Prize 2024, Finalist
'Mountain Water' 2023
137.5 x 183cm
Acrylic on canvas
I have long been fascinated by why we gravitate to specific landscapes and places. Why some places have more of a magnetic pull than others, and why some landscapes can leave you with an uneasy discomfort. I’ve experienced both often; it’s an awareness that has been with me for as long as I can remember. As a child, I still recall the first time my Mum showed me a traditional Chinese Shan Shui painting. The name Shan Shui literally translates to “mountain-water-picture.” Its atmospheric mountainous layers and waterway instantly created a calm within me, a memory that is rekindled whenever I’m back in Tasmania’s remote Southwest.
Mountains and water have been an enduring feature of my work, especially since the loss of my sister and now, more recently, my beautiful and inspiring Mum. Through love and grief, I returned my thoughts to the ancient Celery Top Islands, which heralded a strength and resonance befitting of love, loss, and renewal.
A place to honour nature’s elements and forces, awaken and realign us – a place to feel the presence of nature and those we’ve lost.
Jennifer Riddle
100 Top Australian Artists
Jennifer Riddle names in the Top 100 Hottest Artists 2022
Our Top 100 list of the hottest collectable artists living, working and exhibiting in Australia surveys the current Contemporary Art scene for stand-out artists, whose work features prominently in recent exhibitions, award listings, publications and across high-profile media platforms, earning them commercial success and critical acclaim in a highly competitive art world.
This list we hope brings into the light arguably the best Australian painters, photographers and sculptors making art in 2022.
Glover Prize, 2023 - People's Choice Award, and Children's Choice Award
'Reflections and Reverence' 183x183cm
Artist Statement
Our wilderness has long been the muse for artists throughout history. But today, in this increasingly rare, ancient landscape, I cannot help but feel a stir of emotions that go beyond the awe and sublime. Here, on Bathurst Harbour in Tasmania’s Southwest, you can see the endurance of time in the glacial-formed quartzite landscape and the age-old trees that cling to the Celery Top Islands, as they have done centuries before. Yet, alarmingly, this primordial, enduring landscape is now an endangered rarity in the era of our Anthropocene world. With sentiments concerning humanity’s fractured connection to the natural world, I reflect on this land’s ancestral heritage of the Needwonnee Peoples, whose deep reciprocal relationship with the land and sea can be seen and felt today. Establishing or reuniting our reciprocal relationship and innate connection to nature is imperative to our earth’s healing. Drawing upon my emotional connection and observations surrounding the effects of nature on our physical and emotional well-being, I aim to create an intangible space within this work, a sublimity that generates a raw and primal reunion with nature – a place for reflection, reverence, empathy and hope.
Glover Prize Winner 2022
The John Glover $50,000 Acquisitive Prize.
Celebrating the legacy of John Glover, has become one of Australia’s most significant awards for landscape painting, open to artists from anywhere in the world.
Mornington Peninsula artist, Jennifer Riddle, has been announced as the winner of the 2022 Glover Prize for her entry entitled ‘Wanderings of the Past and Now’.
Jennifer Riddle is an artist based in Red Hill, Victoria who exhibits with Scott Livesey Galleries in Melbourne, and Gallery One in Queensland.
With an emphasis on renewing our senses to natures beauty, Jennifer's work aims to "offer a reflective moment in the landscape — a silent pause from the noise that surrounds us, elevating one’s awareness in a soulful embrace with nature."
Through composition, expressive palette knife applications of varying intensities and delicate veils of brushwork, her work "endeavours to exemplify both the physicality of strength and the poetry of grace that underlies the landscape. Whilst creating a soulful sense of space and depth within the work that offers an experience of stillness, reverence and connection."
Riddle's winning artwork, created with the medium of synthetic polymer on canvas, is her fifth to be selected as a Glover Prize finalist. Riddle has previously featured in the 2015, 2017, 2019, and 2021 Glover Prize Exhibitions. Proving to always be a favourite amongst visitors, Riddle has been awarded the Glover Prize People’s Choice Award in both 2017 and 2019, as well as the Children’s Choice Award in 2017.
Jennifer Riddle’s official statement accompanying her entry speaks about the future of the natural environment:
"It's hard to look at Port Davey's pristine, remote landscape without feeling the enormity and impact of its presence. Particularly as we confront the realities of global warming and the ongoing threats to our most ancient landscapes. Its beauty's breathtaking, nostalgic of another time. Yet, it's a landscape of now. And the overwhelming emotions surrounding Covid-19 and the environment's future have compounded and intensified in this moment.
Perhaps the 19th century Romantics foresaw where we would be today, as they celebrated nature's beauty in the face of the Industrial Revolution, pollution and plague. Similarly, as I find myself back here, between lockdowns and border closures, I can't help but feel akin to the Romantics before me, as I ardently honour the sublime.
Here, I'm reminded of the Needwonnee Peoples deep reciprocal connection with land and sea as I explore these waterways and contemplate its past and future. There are moments of stillness, reflection, and an overwhelming sense of wonderment and profound empathy for this land.
Painting this landscape feels familiar, but its sentiments feel more exposed, raw and primal. And my response is visceral, poignant and euphoric. Deeply I exhale, fuelled with immense hope for humanity's reconciliation with nature."
Riddle has won $50,000 and a bronze maquette of colonial artist, John Glover, after whom the Glover Prize is named
