Artists Gabriella Vittorio and Kat Parker are the respective winners of the SAM Fresh 2024 La Trobe University Award and People’s Choice Award.
The winners were announced to a crowd of over 80 attendees at the museum on Saturday, August 3 during the official exhibition celebration.
Both artists’ winning entries have been on display in the SAM Community Gallery as part of the SAM Fresh 2024 exhibition.
The exhibition is an annual, open-call group exhibition for young creatives aged 16 to 25 living, working or studying in the Goulburn Valley and Hume regions.
This year’s winners made use of different mediums and styles to connect with their audiences and deliver astounding visual pieces.
Ms Vittorio’s winning entry, titled Lunchtime, is a surrealist digital drawing that explores her Italian heritage and the challenges of growing up as a culturally diverse person in Australia.
Ms Vittorio’s work depicts the common experience shared by many multicultural school students of self-consciousness around packed lunches.
As the recipient of the La Trobe University Award, she will receive a $1500 cash prize.
Accomplished printmaker and artist Ms Parker’s winning entry, titled Discarded III, features a life-sized 3D lino cut model of a robust white-eye, an extinct species of bird formerly found on Lord Howe Island.
The artwork appears like a bird in flight, suspended on a barely visible wire from the ceiling of the gallery.
Ms Parker will receive a cash prize of $500 as the recipient of the People’s Choice Award, which was open for voting by visitors since the opening of the exhibition in May.
“Both winning works really connected with audiences and represent a high level of skill within their practices,” SAM curator — community Caroline Esbenshade said.
“Parker’s robust white-eye is such a unique approach to printmaking. Made of many artworks within an artwork, it is composed of multiple lino-cut prints that she has layered together to create a three-dimensional form. The resulting sculpture looks like it has taken flight in our galleries and at any moment will chirp.”
Ms Esbenshade described Ms Vittorio’s work as a “conversation piece”, and remarked on the different experiences people had shared after viewing it.
“I have heard people of different generations and backgrounds sharing with each other what lunches they took to school, what was considered to be a ‘cool lunch’, what was their least favourite thing to have for lunch and more. It’s been a beautiful point of connection between audiences and staff,” she said.
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