Swan Valley favourite Chesters Restaurant of Heafod Glen has announced that its contemporary art award will be held in 2006.
The art initiative began in 2005 and partners Chesters with artsource and the Maalinup Aboriginal Gallery of Henley Brook.
It provides emerging Indi-genous artists with the opportunity to display their work to a wider audience and is run as part of the Swan Valley’s ‘Taste of the Valley’ Festival.
The award also brings together members of the Swan Valley business community.
This year, Peter Dailey, a local artist and senior lecturer at Swan TAFE in Midland, will join the judges panel for the awards.
The inaugural year proved so successful for the restaurant hosts that the competition has been expanded to include an additional exhibition at the Maalinup Aboriginal Gallery.
More than 30 new paintings will be available for viewing across both venues.
The concept is quite unique in that Chesters offers its restaurant space as a defacto gallery for the artists and invites its diners to become pseudo art critics during the exhibition period.
Diners are invited to cast a vote for their favourite work, which will help decide the people’s choice award. The winning artwork, as decided by the judges’ award, will be displayed at Chesters Restaurant for three months.
And Chesters may consider commissioning the winning artist to produce a special, one-off design to feature on the label of a future wine release from the Heafod Glen winery.
Last year’s winner, Greg Flahey, who is also on the judging panel, says the event is a great initiative that shines valuable light onto emerging Indigenous artists and their work.
The works of Indigenous artists will be selected and short-listed by the curators, then displayed at the exhibition venues for a period of four weeks, from 8 April 8 to May 5.
The winners of the 2006 Chesters Restaurant Contem-porary Art Awards will be announced at the end of May.
