The Sydney Royal Art Competition is the pre-eminent leader in the area of amateur art competitions and shows, this year we sold $171,107 of art, the best result since 1989.
Competition is fierce and the quality of works being hung is increasing every year. Given our limited amount of space to hang the works we are relying on our high calibre judges to continue their fine work and decide which of the approximately 2000 works can be hung. Each year the pool of judges we use includes Archibald Prize finalists and winners as well as highly regarded artists and industry specialists.
Speaking of the judges we had a lovely story of success. In the open still life class this year our judge Cressida Campbell, who is a highly regarded artist, awarded first prize to Christine Chen, a 13 year old girl who had been entered in the wrong class. Her mother was very worried about the error and spoke to me on the delivery day to see if I could move her daughters work into a children’s class. I explained we could not move works which had been incorrectly placed in the wrong class but I offered to have a look at the work and give her my opinion on her chances. When I saw what a beautiful work it was I said I thought she would have a very good chance and that her daughter would definitely hold her own against the older exhibitors. As it turned out she did and won 1st prize. Her teacher is Adam Chang who was one of the runners up this year in the Archibald Prize with his portrait of Brian Sherman.
The serendipity of this was that Cressida had also won a ribbon at the show when she was a young girl with her painting of a cat – her mother still has the painting with the ribbon draped over it.
In the cooking classes we have seen a huge resurgence of interest – our entries in this area were up 26%. The perishable cooking judging day is always a wonderful day with many and varied stories of too hot ovens and happiness and heartache in equal measure, accompanying keen home chefs and their freshly baked goods.
Chair of Arts Committee, Alison Renwick
RAS President Glenn Dudley with Christine Chen, her mother and Chair of Arts Committee, Alison Renwick
