The Mosman Art Prize – and its generous major prize of (raised from $30,000 to $50,000 in 2017) – typically attracts a high calibre of painters, like former Archibald winners Guy Maestri and Wendy Sharpe, Doug Moran winner David Fairbairn (who won the MAP in 2012), and commercial heavyweights like Ken Done. As such, it’s a great annual cross-section of Australian painting.
The winner of the 2017 Mosman Art Prize, as judged by Kirsten Paisley (deputy director of the National Gallery of Australia), is Indonesian-Australian artist Jumaadi for his multi-panel work 'Some kind of record' (2016), painted on old Masonite filing dividers.
Paisley said of the winning work: "The studies allude to a system of recording, with the letter of the filing dividers leaving us to wonder if what at first seemed to be a record of weather recorded over a period of days, might have a greater meaning. Are these studies about people? Do they stand for feelings or moods or for places one has been? In this way Jumaadi’s work is gentle and poetic, much like a storyboard which threads together disparate moments of reflection, operating as a meditation on the meeting point of earth and sky, animated by the weather and its associated evocative moods."