MARGARET ACKLAND WINS PORTIA GEACH PEOPLE’S CHOICE AWARD

Margaret Ackland ‘The reader’ a self portrait in silver with glass and stripes’

Sydney-based artist Margaret Ackland has won the 2021Portia Geach People’s Choice Award with a self-portrait painted in watercolour.

The $1,000 People’s Choice at the Portia Geach exhibition at the S.H. Ervin Gallery is given  in memory of Harry & Winifred Macorison by Dr Heather Macorison & Ms Hilary  Macorison. 

Margaret Ackland is a Sydney based artists who has had over 30 solo shows since 1985. She is represented by Flinders Lane Gallery in Melbourne where her most recent shows have been online, Seeing Things (July 2021) Social Distancing (April 2020). Her last show in the gallery was Present Tense in September 2018. 

Her work is held in a range of national collections including Artbank, the Holmes a Court Collection and Deakin University. She won the Portia Geach Portrait Prize in 1988 and has been four time finalist in the Archibald Prize. 

She has featured in Italian Vogue and on ABC TV’s Compass series. In 2012 she was included in Not the Way Home -13 Artists Paint the Desert, at the National Trust S.H. Ervin Gallery, Sydney. 

From 2014 ‘The Watercolour News’, a massive body of work reflected on images from our daily newspapers. It was exhibited at the Gippsland Regional Gallery in 2016 and continued until late 2019. Margaret has also taught painting and drawing at tertiary level from 1986- 2015. 

Margaret Ackland on her work The reader: A self-portrait in silver with glass and stripes – “When in doubt my impulse is to return to still life, that small world I can construct and  control. I create small sets and I have a limited cast of ‘players’. 

The objects in this work are personal and domestic; my mother’s silver sugar bowl, glass  measuring jugs and some flowers. The stripes appear to settle and calibrate the  composition. 

The more closely I examine my little sets the more I am rewarded with unexpected  reflections and distortions. Strange self-portraits appear, the world outside is sometimes  upside down. It feels like an apt subject for life in these strange times.’  

Margaret expressed her surprise and delight at being announced the winner of the People’s  Choice Award.

An exhibition of the 57 finalist works is open at the S.H. Ervin Gallery until 19  December.  

Gallery Information: Address: Watson Road, Observatory Hill, The Rocks, Sydney Hours: Tuesday – Sunday, 11am – 5pm (closed Monday) 

Enquiries: (02) 9258 0173  

Cost: $12/$10 Concessions/ $4 National Trust members/ Children under 12 free

http://www.shervingallery.com.au

Featured image : Artist Margaret Ackland