Image above: Michael Le Grand Transit 2021 painted steel 12 x 22 x 13 cm
Congratulations to Michael Le Grand who has been announced as the winner of the 2021 Deakin University Contemporary Small Sculpture Award.
Selected from a highly competitive field of 313 other entrants, Le Grand was announced as the winner of the annual $10,000 prize by Deakin University Vice-Chancellor Professor Iain Martin during an online award ceremony.
This year marks the 11th anniversary of this annual acquisitive award, which makes a welcome return after being postponed last year. Described by the judges as a “wholly resolved and beguiling spectacle”, Michael Le Grand’s sculpture practice has long been acclaimed for its formalist values and gestural structure.
Judges Leanne Willis, Geoffrey Edwards and Jacquie Nichols-Reeves said: “With this work, in spite of its diminutive scale, nothing is lost of the bold, architectural character usually associated with the artist’s large scale works. Transit operates successfully in ‘miniature’ with its lucid twists and turns and vivid colour palette that are signature features of the artist’s oeuvre.”
The finalists exhibition will remain on display until Wednesday 15 December, 2021. For more information, visit the Deakin University Art Gallery website.