About Girl Genius
The Girl Genius Award is a independent prize awarded each year at UNSW Art and Design's annual Kudos Awards. The prize is awarded to a participating female student and is guest judged by a prominent female art world figure. It was established in 2014 by Tess Allas, Director of Indigenous Programs at UNSW Art & Design and then honours student now graduate (of Art & Design) Miranda Samuels, who both felt this type of award was necessary as one means of addressing the gender inequity that exists within the pedagogy of art and the under-representation of female artists in the professional art world.
Funds for the award are raised each year from committed private benefactors from across the national landscapes of the arts, media and academia.
Past recipients of the Girl Genius Award are:
2014 Girl Genius was awarded to Claudia Nicholson for her floral installation, Baby I Would Climb The Andes. And Yao Zhang received the ‘Highly Commended’ award for her etching, United Horses for the year of the horse. Guest judge for 2014 was Professor Marie Sierra, Deputy Dean & Head of School, UNSW Art & Design.
2015 Girl Genius was awarded to Marcia Swaby for her mixed media work, Pores 1 & 2. And Natalie Duncan received the ‘Highly Commended’ award for her ceramic work I was so pissed. Guest judge for 2015 was Sam Wild, Manager of Arts Development and Investment, Visual Arts, Museums and Literature at Arts NSW.
2016 Girl Genius was awarded to Sabella D’Souza for her video work ~my motherland is a mouthful~. Guest Judge for 2016 was Lisa Havilah, Director CarriageWorks.
What is Prelude?
Prelude is a public program inviting cultural producers to partner with Kudos Gallery in creating new kinds of critical discourse with audiences. Prelude provides a platform for academics, artists, curators, historians, and theorists to discuss the roles and conditions of cultural production today. This program is presented alongside our applications-based exhibition program and focuses on interrogating ideas through collaborations, performance, publications, cultural and subcultural exchange, lectures, workshops and discussions. For every edition of Prelude Kudos Gallery will invite new cultural producers to extend their research into a public forum.
Where are we now? Where can we be? Prelude is an opportunity to consider how we negotiate, and are negotiated by, culture. In collaboration with new cultural producers, each edition of this program looks to a different issue, unpacking the now so that we can anticipate potential futures.
Prelude enables Kudos Gallery to actively contribute to and support cultural practice, and creates a new avenue for the gallery to work alongside the greater Sydney arts community in fostering vibrant engagement and dialogue.
Image: Lost Without You 2016, (Alfombra de aserrín) Sawdust and Glitter, image credit: Lucy Parakhina. This work was commissioned by MONA and exhibited at Turnbull Family Funerals, Hobart for Dark MOFO festival.
