The recipient of the Art and Australia and Credit Suisse Private Banking Contemporary Art Award for Summer 2011 is Laith McGregor
Submitted by: Fiona David at Art & Australia
Photo: Laith McGregor, 2011. Photograph courtesy Jeremy Drape.
Laith McGregor, Veilen Dank, mein Damen und Herren!, 2011. Biro and pencil on paper, 195 x 150 cm. Courtesy the artist and Sullivan + Strumpf Fine Art, Sydney.
The Melbourne-based artist Laith McGregor, 34, whose work crosses the mediums of drawing, painting, sculpture and video, has as been announced as the Summer 2011 recipient of the Art & Australia/Credit Suisse Private Banking Contemporary Art Award. Tete blue, 2011, a sculptural bust of oil paint on modelling clay, portrays McGregor’s signature obsession with beards and will appear on the back cover of the Summer 2011 issue of Art & Australia.
'I feel honoured to be part of an amazing collection of artists who have established a prominent position in the magazine', McGregor says. 'For me, it’s always been the first port of call when I grab the latest copy of Art & Australia: who’s got the back cover? Always an eclectic and valuable source of contemporary Australian art, I look forward to being part of that journey.'
McGregor epitomises a new generation of multimedia artists who have shaken up more traditional artforms such as drawing, all the while embracing them. The popularity of his biro drawings has been affirmed with recent appearances in important survey exhibitions such as ‘Freehand: Recent Australian Drawing’ (2010-11) at Melbourne’s Heide Museum of Modern Art and ‘New Psychedelia’ (2011) at the University of Queensland Art Museum in Brisbane.
The Art & Australia/Credit Suisse Private Banking Contemporary Art Award has proved to be an important milestone in a young artist’s career. Awarded quarterly since 2004, the prize encourages artists in the first five years of their professional practice. With the support of Credit Suisse Private Banking, the prize helps emerging artists in two ways: by bringing their work to the attention of the public through the back cover exposure and accompanying feature article, and by the purchasing of one work annually to form part of the Art & Australia Collection.
Art & Australia is the country’s longest-running art journal and was established by publisher Sam Ure Smith in 1963.
Credit Suisse AG is dedicated to supporting emerging art as a global initiative. Headquartered in Zurich, it operates in over fifty countries worldwide. In Private Banking, Credit Suisse provides comprehensive advice and a broad range of wealth management solutions, including pension planning, life insurance products and wealth and inheritance advice, which are tailored to the needs of high-net-worth and ultra-high-net-worth individuals worldwide.
http://www.artandaustralia.com.au/emergingartists.asp
