DOMINIK MERSCH GALLERY AWARD 2010

Master of Visual Arts candidate, Locust Jones has been announced as the 2010 winner of the Dominik Mersch Gallery Award, an annual award in collaboration with Sydney College of the Arts. As part of the award, Dominik Mersch Gallery provides an exhibition space in the gallery to show one or more artists from SCA. A panel selects the artist from SCA’s end of year Postgraduate Degree Show. “Offering an exhibition space to show their works, is the best way to support young and promising artists", says Dominik Mersch.

Dean of SCA, Professor Colin Rhodes said, “This is a great collaboration between one of Sydney’s top contemporary galleries and one of the country’s best art schools. It gives an opportunity for one of our best to reach a wide, appreciative audience. Locust Jones is a very fine artist, whose work is socially and politically engaged, whilst being of the utmost quality as image.”

Born in 1963, Christchurch, New Zealand, Locust Jones currently lives and works in Sydney, Australia. In 1993, he graduated with a Bachelor of Visual Arts from SCA and he has just completed his Master of Visual Arts in Printmedia. Since 1993, Jones has held in excess of 25 solo exhibitions within Australia, New Zealand, the United States, India, Lebanon, and Germany. Featuring among his most recent solo exhibitions are: What a way to go, Solander Gallery, New Zealand, Ride it til it dies, Rear View, Melbourne, Final Notice, Centre of Contemporary Art, Christchurch, New Zealand and Loke Time, The Godley Hotel, Lake Tekapo, New Zealand and I Walk The Line New Australian Drawing, (2009) Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney.

Among his various awards and achievements, he was nominated finalist in the Geelong Acquisitive Print Awards (2009), and the Shell Fremantle Print Prize (2009), won the Hazelhurst Work on Paper Award (2009), and in 2004 was the recipient of an artist in residence exchange to Beirut, Lebanon. His work is widely admired and features in several major public and corporate collections including Artbank; University of Wollongong, University of Western Sydney and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, New Zealand.

Image: Locust Jones, Big Bad World, 2009, ink on paper, 135 x 230 cm.