QUEENSLAND.- The Queensland Art Gallery presents ’s Queensland’s National New Media Art Award, on view through February 8, 2009. This exhibition will feature the work of leading new media artists invited to participate in the inaugural Premier of Queensland’s National New Media Art Award. An Award of $75 000 will be presented to one of the exhibiting artists.

The exhibition and Award will be presented every two years and winning works will become part of the Queensland Art Gallery’s permanent collection.

Accompanying the Award and exhibition is the Premier of Queensland’s New Media Scholarship which will be presented to an emerging Queensland-based new media artist.

The 2008 selection committee comprises Tony Ellwood, Director, Queensland Art Gallery; Melinda Rackham, Director, Australian Network for Art and Technology; and Liz Hughes, Executive Director, Experimenta Media Arts. The Hon. Anna Bligh, Premier of Queensland, will announce the award and scholarship recipient on 31 October 2008.

2008 shortlisted artists
Peter Alwast
b.1975, Warsaw, Poland
Lives and works in Brisbane

Peter Alwast trained as a painter and channels what he terms ‘painterly enquiries’ through new media technologies such as 3D animation. His works draw upon a wide variety of imagery to create fictional spaces that reference public spaces and private memories. Alwast graduated from the Queensland University of Technology in 1997 and was awarded a Samstag International Visual Arts Scholarship in 1998 to undertake a Masters of Fine Arts at the Parsons School of Design, New York. He was also the recipient of Parsons School of Design’s important Oscar Kolin Fellowship. Alwast has exhibited at the George Petelin Gallery, Gold Coast; Gallery Barry Keldoulis, Sydney; and Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, and has been included in group exhibitions in New York and New Jersey, United States.

Julie Dowling
b.1969, Perth
Badimaya/Widi/Yamatji people
Lives and works in Perth

Julie Dowling is internationally recognised for her paintings and drawings. Her work in media art comprises aspects of video and photography as tools for documenting herself and a wider unfolding personal journey to her ancestral country. Dowling graduated from the Claremont School of Art and Curtin University in Perth and has exhibited widely both nationally and internationally, including a group exhibition at Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne; the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; the Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide; and the 2000 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art. In 2007 she was included in the National Gallery of Australia’s national Indigenous art triennial ‘Culture Warriors’.

Anita Fontaine
b.1979, Nambour
Lives and works in Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Anita Fontaine works in the realm of interactive media and animation, creating surreal and engaging works that readdress and expand the parameters of media art and gaming culture. Fontaine graduated from the Queensland College of Art and has exhibited nationally at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Melbourne; Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces, Melbourne; and the National Portrait Gallery, Canberra. In 2004 she undertook a residency at the Banff New Media Institute in Canada, designing location-based mobile experiences.

Joyce Hinterding
b.1958, Melbourne
David Haines
b.1966, London, United Kingdom
Live and work in Blue Mountains, NSW

Joyce Hinterding and David Haines maintain individual art practices but regularly collaborate on large scale new media installations. Their collaborative works employ a range of new media technologies and often explore natural phenomena within artificial, digitally constructed scenarios. Together they have exhibited extensively both nationally and internationally including at the Perth Institute of Contemporary Art; Artspace, Sydney; MOCA Taipei, Taiwan; Foundation for Art and Creative Technology, Liverpool, United Kingdom; Bienal de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil; the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Melbourne; 9th Biennale of Sydney; 7th International Istanbul Biennial, Turkey; and the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney.

Natalie Jeremijenko
b.1966, Mackay
Lives and works in New York, United States

Natalie Jeremijenko works at the intersection of contemporary art, science and engineering, creating interactive media, site-specific performances and installations, and experimental design. Jeremijenko was included in the 1997 and 2006 Whitney Biennale of American Art, the 2006–07 Cooper Hewit Smithsonian Design Triennial, and Documenta 1997. Her work has also featured in group exhibitions at the Tate Modern, London; the Guggenheim Museum, New York, United States; the Museum of Modern Art, New York, United States; MASSMoCA, Massachusetts, United States; Museum Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt, Germany; and LUX Gallery, London, United Kingdom. A 1999 Rockefeller Foundation Fellow, she has been named one of the 40 most influential artist–designers by I.D. Magazine, and in 2003 one of the top 100 young innovators by the MIT Technology Review. She is currently Professor of Art at NYU Steinhardt.

Adam Nash
b.1964, Bristol, United Kingdom (Immigrated Brisbane, Australia, 1972)
Lives and works in Melbourne

Adam Nash is recognised as one of the most innovative media artists working with multi-user virtual environments. Nash situates his work within networked real-time 3D spaces such as ‘Second Life’, exploring these virtual worlds as live audiovisual performance spaces. Nash has exhibited widely across Europe, Asia, the United States and South America, including the 2008 01SJ Biennial of Global Art, San Jose, United States; SIGGRAPH, San Diego, United States; Thailand New Media Art Festival; Museo de Arte Contemporaneo, Argentina; the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Melbourne; Inter-Society for the Electronic Arts, The Netherlands; and the 2007 Venice Biennale, Italy. In 2007 he was a co-recipient of the inaugural Australia Council Second Life Artist in Residency grant with Christopher Dodds and Justin Clemens.

Sam Smith
b.1980, Sydney
Lives and works in Sydney

Sam Smith’s installations combine videos and sculptures that reference the props, equipment and image-making processes of filmmaking and video in a digital realm. Smith has exhibited nationally in group shows at Macquarie University Art Gallery, Sydney; Hazelhurst Regional Gallery & Arts Centre, Gymea; Firstdraft, Sydney; 4A Asia Australia Arts Centre, Sydney; Ivan Dougherty Gallery, Sydney; Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces, Melbourne; and Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts. In 2007 Smith received the prestigious Helen Lempriere Travelling Art Scholarship to undertake the Whitney Museum of American Art’s Independent Study Program in New York, which focuses on studio, curatorial, critical and architecture studies. He has since also won the inaugural 2008 Wilson HTM National Art Prize and the 2008 Churchie National Emerging Art Award.

John Tonkin
b.1963, Adelaide
Lives and works in Sydney

John Tonkin has been involved in the field of new media art since the mid 1980s. He has worked across a wide range of media technologies and is currently producing interactive works using 3D animation and data-mapping technologies. Tonkin has held numerous solo exhibitions including at the Centre for Contemporary Photography, Melbourne; Artspace, Sydney; Sherman Galleries, Sydney; and the Experimental Art Foundation, Adelaide. His work has been included in major group exhibitions internationally including at Wood Street Galleries, Pittsburgh, United States; the International Symposium on Electronic Art, San Jose, United States; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei, Taiwan; the Pompidou Centre, Paris; the Seoul Museum of Art, South Korea; the National Portrait Gallery, Canberra; and the Queensland Art Gallery.

Mari Velonaki
b.1968, Athens, Greece
Lives and works in Sydney

Mari Velonaki is recognised internationally for her work in the field of robotics and artificial intelligence. Her work utilises cutting-edge technology and expert engineering to create works that engage the viewer physically and emotionally. Working in the field of interactive installation art for over 12 years, she is currently an artist–researcher at the Australian Centre for Field Robotics, University of Sydney where she collaborates on projects with Dr.s David Rye, Steve Scheding, and Stefan Williams. Velonaki’s work has been seen in major exhibitions at the Zendai Museum of Modern Art, Shanghai, China; Prix Ars Electronica - International Competition for CyberArts, Linz, Austria; Beijing New Media Art Biennial, China Millennium Art Museum, Beijing; Wood Street Galleries, Pittsburgh, USA; European Media Art Festival, Germany; Conde Duque Museum, ARCO, Madrid; Te Papa Tongarewa, National Museum of New Zealand, Wellington; Powerhouse Museum, Sydney; ‘Primavera’, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney; and the Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art, Adelaide.