The University of Queensland National Artists’ Self-Portrait Prize highlights The University of Queensland’s commitment to developing a National Collection of Artists’ Self-Portraits.
Life is risk / Art is risk
What is contemporary art if not a risk, a monumental folly? Could there be a riskier venture than creating art—painting, music, dance— and showing it to an audience, with no control of how it may be received or understood? Does not art, broadly speaking, reflect the human condition? Not in the sense of emotions, but rather in the idea that life itself is a risk: we are born, we live and we die. All that happens in between is a calculated risk: we sink or swim.
Making and exhibiting art is a risky pursuit. The artist need not be rewarded financially or be critically well received, or even acknowledged on the cultural landscape. The artist risks their work being reviled, celebrated or, in the worst-case scenario, ignored. To make a self portrait then is to add to the calculated risk, for it is to say something about oneself explicitly, to risk exposure. Herein lies its strength. The 2011 Self-Portrait Prize invites artists to take a risk, a risk that the work may not be revered, but instead may provoke.
Curator: Alison Kubler
Entry to the Prize is by invitation only
