Advocate Art Award

2023

Lisa Stefanoff

won the Chapman and Bailey Excellence Prize

for her video

'Never Ceded'

Lisa Stefanoff - Never Ceded

Artist's Statement

This work might be a dream, or a quiet nightmare.

It’s about the death of empire in one corner of one of its colonies - this town’s CBD, it’s river and ‘old Eastside’ neighbourhood; Central Arrernte country: this place known variously as Alice Springs, Mparntwe and other specific Arrernte language place names.

On a formal level the work invites its audience to spend 7 and a half minutes attuning to place by attending to a juxtaposition sight and sound.

The piece uses a historic moment to look at once both backwards and forwards, towards other possibly historic moments on our future horizons.

I was trained as a documentary filmmaker. I love the counterpoint work of editing; of composing story and crafting affective impact by cutting and stitching
together sound and image in time.

The surreality of the everyday - a routine and uneventful drive home with broadcast radio on, for example - sometimes needs a frame to hold it in focus. I've used a recording through a windscreen to render uncanny ironies visible and audible.

I filmed the piece in live audio-visual synchrony, on an iPhone 12MaxPro camera.

The ‘decisive moment’ of the work came when I got into my car in the Coles carpark at around 9pm on the 19th of September 2022, and turned the key, activating my radio. What I could see and what I was hearing was immediately cinematic.
I balanced my camera on the dash and drove at a pace that matched the processional dirge of the commentary. In this way, the piece was edited entirely ‘in camera’.


Other prizewinners were:

Faces Prize: Bre VanDenBerghe - Naomi

Stories Prize: Scott Bennett - Four Souls on the Path

and

The Chapman and Bailey Places Prize, in memory of Iain Campbell

Ruby Bethune - Behind the Headlines




The exhibition and other artworks

Entries for the 2023 Advocate Art Award are now closed.

You'll have to wait until 2024!

Those entrants who do not wish to utilise the online entry form and credit card payment can enter manually in two steps. 

First: make your entry payment by EFT/Bank Transfer:

Acct: Central Australian Art Society        BSB: 633000         Acct No: 201306206

Second: Complete the form below and submit it

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