Ten WA artists in running for $50,000 Minderoo Artist Fund Award

Ten outstanding West Australian artists have been named the inaugural cohort of the Minderoo Foundation Artist Fund. The fund was launched earlier this year, in part as a response to the devastating effect the pandemic has had on artists and the creative sector.

The 2021 cohort span a range of artistic disciplines, from experimental film, to literature, to performative sculpture and spoken word poetry.

The six recipients of the $25,000 grants are: Claudia Caporn, Sukhjit Khalsa, Jay Emmanuel, Daniel Walbidi, Amy Perejuan-Capone and Nathan Beard.

Additionally, four artists have been selected for the artist residencies, valued at $10,000 each. They are: Deb Fitzpatrick, Graham Hay, Emily Honey, and Louis Frere-Harvey.

At an event to celebrate the ten recipients on Thursday night, Minderoo Foundation co-founder Nicola Forrest AO announced that in addition to the grant and residency funding, one of the cohort would also receive a $50,000 award.

“Independent artists are the lifeblood of a thriving creative sector, and we know it takes more than project funding to sustain an artistic career,” Mrs Forrest said.

“That’s why we’ve decided to establish the Minderoo Artist Fund Award– to provide further security for our talented WA artists, to pursue their creative endeavours.”

“The Minderoo Artist Fund Award will be presented to one of the ten artists, at the end of each funding round, in recognition of their exceptional achievement while delivering their project, and the contribution the work has made to the community.”

Over the next twelve months, each of the ten selected artists will undertake a new creative project.

“We received hundreds of applications for the Minderoo Foundation Artist Fund this year and were absolutely blown away by the quality of the submissions,” Mrs Forrest said. “Congratulations to our outstanding 2021 Artist Fund cohort! We are so excited to watch your projects unfold and evolve over the next twelve months!”