The winner of the 2017 GreenWay Open Art Prize is Jody Graham who has won a $5,000 prize package for her work ‘Drawn from Discarded’.

The Cooks River Small Sculpture Prize was awarded to artist Hannah Carroll Harris for her work, ‘Your other Half (Fracture #2)’. She said her collection of fractured stones symbolise an exploration of our relation to the natural world in an age of ecological despair and serve as a reminder that we cannot be extricated from the world around us.

“Combining stone collected from a residency in far western New South Wales and paraffin wax, the work blurs our comprehension of what we know to be natural and of our current ecologies. The synthetic interruptions that quietly disturb the stone suggest disorder, and that perhaps there is something out of balance,” Carroll Harris said.

Artist Hannah McKellar received a highly commended award in the sculpture category for her work ‘My Microcosm’ which she said is intended as a form of therapy and escapism in a world where cities continue to grow at a rapid pace, and our need for nature becomes more apparent. Explaining her work, she said:

“The essentials of human existence are adapting to the concrete landscape we continue to build upon. In today’s world it is common to rely on medications and distractions to go through day-to-day, rather than enjoying the beauty of what naturally grows around us. In a desperate attempt to rebuild our natural world, multiple hand-made rock forms sit together to create a mini city. Each form tightly wrapped in linen and soft yarns, in an attempt to hide the underlying rigid and harsh structure.”

This year a record number of entries were submitted to this popular annual community arts event, which celebrates the precious urban green corridor in Sydney’s inner west.

Announcing the GreenWay Open Art Prize winners, Inner West Council Mayor Darcy Byrne said:

“The GreenWay Art Prize provides a great opportunity to showcase the talents of our our local artists – and to celebrate this precious urban green corridor right on our doorstep,” Mayor Byrne said.

“And this year we have much to celebrate as work to complete the remaining 3.2 kms of the GreenWay from Parramatta Road South to the Cooks River gets underway as a result of a joint $14.5m commitment by the State Government and Inner West Council to complete the GreenWay.

“This means that by 2021 we should see the community’s vision for the GreenWay finally become a reality,” he said.

You can view a selection of works from the GreenWay Art Prize as part of an expanded tour exhibiting at the Bankstown Arts Centre from 5 – 19 December 2018.