Congratulations to Evan Pank, who was announced late last year as the winner of the 2017 Artereal Gallery Mentorship Award. Awarded each year to one graduating Honours student from Sydney College of the Arts, the award will provide Pank with mentoring and exhibiting opportunities at Artereal Gallery in 2018.
Pank received two awards on the night, also being awarded the inaugural Megalo Print Studio Residency Award. The awards were presented by SCA Director Andrew Lavery on Tuesday 21 November, the opening night of the SCA honours exhibition.
Titled The Twelfth Man, Pank’s winning artwork examines the integration of football supporter culture and political activism through the depiction of violent protest within the cauldron of a football stadium. Pank explains: “The work draws on my own experiences as a football fan in Australia and watching games overseas, incorporating the emotional and political dynamic that I’ve experienced at different fixtures as a framework for the development of the artwork.”
Artereal Director Luisa Catanzaro commented: ”Pank’s work is bold and confrontational. It transports you and immerses you in another time and place. It addresses issues of politics, violence and identity in a sub-culture that is clearly evoked through simple but evocative imagery.”
“We were particularly impressed with Pank’s ambition in realising the work on such a monumental scale and his clear mastery of print making techniques as well as the simple installation/presentation style,” Catanzaro continued.
This is just the beginning for Pank, who plans to use both the mentorship and the residency to develop new work in 2018.
“Being selected for the Artereal Award has given me a lot of confidence in my own ability to pursue an art career and in my own practice,” he said. “The mentorship will help to provide me with direction coming out of art school and enable me to keep my momentum after finishing. I have a lot of ideas for new work and it will be great to have the support from Artereal Gallery to develop these concepts.”
The striking artwork was created using both screen printing and spray painting across two, six metre lengths of paper. Pank aims to explore further this technique and scale, explaining that the four-week residency at Megalo Print Studio will be the perfect opportunity to do so. “I haven’t undertaken a residency before so I’m excited to have this opportunity and experience,” he said. “I’ve got more screen print and spray paintings that I would like to complete and the facilities at Megalo will help with my large-scale artworks.”
These recent accolades follow on from what was a very busy and rewarding year for Pank. In 2017, Pank was selected to exhibit at The Other Art Fair Sydney in 2017 and was also awarded the 2017 Fremantle Arts Centre Print Award valued at $16,000.
