The Monash Gallery of Art has announced Singapore-based artist Joseph McGlennon as the winner of the 2015 William and Winifred Bowness Photography Prize, Australia’s most coveted photography prize. McGlennon was awarded the $25,000 cash prize for his work “Florilegium#1” 2014.
“Florilegium#1” 2014 is from the artist’s “Florilegium” (latin for a gathering of botanicals) series. Photographed in Madagascar, Tahiti and Singapore, the romantic and enchanting image is a complex composition of approximately 100 layers.
“I have captured each bird, flower, vine, and butterfly and created a florolegium landscape straight from the Age of Enlightenment,” McGlennon explains.
“There is an enchanting clash of empirical scientific observation coupled with a deep romantically lush and diffused spotlight of compassion for something wild, observed for a brilliant moment before vanishing into the fog of time. This lush landscape dwells in a most complex, beautiful and sadly unreachable world.”
The judging panel for the Bowness Photography Prize included renowned Australian artist Bill Henson, Bendigo Art Gallery Director Karen Quinlan, and MGA Senior Curator Stephen Zagala.
“This picture contains worlds. It suggests the history of the relationship between the human imagination and the natural order of the world around us,” said Bill Henson. “The work has an almost anonymous perfection that reinforces the fact that culture is never outside nature.”
“Joseph brings the macrocosmic and microcosmic together masterfully in this landscape,” said Stephen Zagala. “It fills us with a sense of wonder for what transpires beyond the contours of human hubris, making humility into something exciting and creative.”
