The innaugural Wallace Interpretive Portraiture Prize was a hectic mess of an idea and subsequent opening night. Much like the Wright brothers before it, only able to stay out of the gutter for approx.12 seconds on its first flight.   We did fly though, and it is with pleasure that the Wallace family …

… announces the 2025 art prize winners and finalists.

Surprisingly the major and the minor mullets this year both leveraged off the concept of the subjects manic energy and fractured/faceted reality.

This years Golden Mullet goes to: Hil Van Dijk , with his work of oil on canvas This Charming Young Man

$800 First Prize, Plus a month long exhibition in the new Doodler Gallery worth $1200

This Charming Young Man

Artist: Hil Van Dijk

Size: 950×1300

Medium: Oil on Linen

NFS

Wallace Review:

This weighed upon me heavily, as by awarding the Dijk the big mullet we were going to be hearing about it alot. It does grab you though. Great scale, restrained colour palette and thoughtful contextual framing choices can take you far, but it has the focused disturbance of the subject.  

It is not simply the figure in this piece which is at odds with itself. Hilly fought hard to bring detail into his patented close your eyes throw the paint style, and Hilly’s work often begs for some focus. Possibly someone hit him with a stick (Venise?). The detail in this piece is fucked up and even misleading to the casual observer (They are not veins pulsing on my right arm, but rather a large dragon tattoo), but he knew approximately where to put some lines, and generally when to stop.   

Detail and specificity have formed a dark cloud over Hilly’s work since before I have known him, and if it wasn’t for the obvious attention to detail and patient preparation/presentation of his canvases you would judge him incapable of consideration. This clearly is not the case. His best work often is childlike and almost always unrecognisable, but I feel his inroads to definition are paying off. Maybe if he comes to terms with the physical act of drawing, the tension which makes this endearing will be lost. As a whole I think we can conclude that there is still hope for Hilly.   

Moving ahead, I would loose the forth eye, and consolidate the central cyclops eye to work as both left & right at once. The lower darker central eye makes the piece more accidental and distracts from the idea of “tearing”, leaving it with a gentler idea of “blurring”, get rid of it.  Ironically the rendition of my home made “X” tattoo on my right outer shoulder is reasonably accurate as the tattoo is actually that shit. You missed an opportunity however to redeem this and refrence the fact that I use that symbol in almost every work I’ve ever done. Sometimes lying will make your work look more real, that element as it is, just looks like a mistake.

The 2025 Mini-Mullet, awarded by his peers:

Mason Curran with the collage Paul is Splitting

$200 Second Prize, Plus $200 Framing from artessentials.com.au, Plus a Weekly Doodler Membership

PAUL IS SPLITTING (HAPPY/SAD/PEACEFUL/FUN)

$200.00

Artist: Mason Curran

Size: 320×320

Medium: Collage on Canvas (1 in a series of 5)

Artist Statement: Paul Wallace has a vivacious energy this is as infectious as the Black Plague. He seems to me to be a man of monstrous charisma and optimises the beautiful insanity of the human condition. Love, hate, sensitivity, chaos, despair, passion, kindness and generosity all rolled into one mean ball pure, honest, power. Thus, for anyone who has met Paul, my works should speak for themselves.

Wallace Review:

Firstly, that both winners elude to a manic issue should be noted. Other entrants hinted at this line of questioning, but only Hil and Mason attacked it with such violence, and both almost Cyclops me. On reflection, Hilly should have gone harder.

A lot of what I do is not subtle. Surely there is subtlety, complexity, and nuance, but there is hard extremity which needs to  be navigated first. Paul is Splitting is a magnifcent study of what the winning collage could have been. Make it bigger. I need to be bigger. Keep the shitty treated teal Bunnings timber frame and flat watermelon canvas background. It all helps me imagine my head as a watermelon rocking back and forth split on the ground (yet still talking about some shit).

Once my head is a metre wide, you can print the photo’s on canvas and then using colour matched thread sew the sections together. You don’t want to hide them, you need to revel in them.

Texturally maybe hit my head with a spot gloss varnish. Do this and we can sell a $4000 version in the gallery. And finally lose the hangers on, or at lest present them seperately. I know I said “yeah just throw the extra’s in”, but now that I’ve seen it, it needs some clear air. Presently it gets watered down a bit. A great visceral interpretation.

[Incidentally, I sold Splitting last night to a lovely German bloke who lives in Hong Kong.]

This year we have also awarded 3 special prises;   

The Judy Wallace Award for Inventive Sentimentality and Stalking,  goes to Norja Klem & Ariel Renard for the joint works “Step up and see” & “Trough Wallies”.

$200 Framing from artessentials.com.au, Plus a $55 Weekly Doodler Membership

Wallace Review:

I don’t believe these works were necessarily intended to be viewed together, but it has been deemed that as total work they form a stirring and disturbing picture.  

The first part being a performative piece which involved an unknown alias (Norja), an envelope of five dollar bills, some well timed formal complaints via email which fucking infuriated me, a masterfully fortuitous drop in for a beer, and then an equally well timed art drop off (the 3rd part) when I was across the road for 5 minutes .... A masterclass in piss-taking, exploiting intimate knowledge of some annoying people I know, and don’t.  

The second part displayed in the toilet where you get an opportunity to urinate on my face and watch it dissolve. As a standalone concept, pretty good, but honestly the actual portraits really stuck with me. My visage on the toxic trough lollies, and that on the Manneken Pis statue were remarkably accurate to how I looked in the late 70’s in Canberra. If you just had the penis functioning and constantly flowing into the toilet you would have one a mullet.  

The third portion, a freestanding mirror which one maneuvers to get my face, beer, and penis onto the viewer was a lovely idea but did suffer from some functional ease issues. The facial portrait on the mirror face is a tough gig and is a little cheap. The hippo penis pool-ring testicles are very cool, but again the medium makes this expression difficult. The same with the beer, and I couldn’t hold the mirror rope in position with the Melbourne Bitter positioned to look like I was holding it. Pretty fucking funny though. What mum loved though was the torrent of internal history and fun once the cabinet was opened. A true dense packed joy, easily absorbed by Nude Night regulars, and casual Wallace admirers alike, and delightfully confusing to children of all ages.  

Thank you.

Best Dog in Show goes to Jon Snow for the complex dreamscape where I am both gorgeous, and a dick.

$50 art supplies from Eckersley’s, plus a $55 Weekly Doodler Membership

A GREAT NIGHT

$650.00

Artist: Jon Snow

Size: 300×440

Medium: Pencil & Marker on paper

Artist Statement: "It was meant to be just another Nudenight until the aliens invaded. Mechanical machines emerged from the ground vaporizing the populace of Marrickville. No one knew if they were really 'alien' or AI controlled space craft sent by trillionaire Musk to cull the poor.

It was nearing 7pm and Nudenight host Paul Wallace was frantically setting up the night's life drawing session. As the sound of destruction echoed outside, the local inhabitants of Nude Night were eagerly awaiting the first pose of the night. Paul had everything under control; dumplings cooking, music queued up, the only missing ingredient for an unforgettable night of drawing was the model.

Suddenly there was a giant explosion and the walls of Nudenight came crumpling down. Luckily no one was hurt but the fallen walls revealed all of Marrickville ablaze as the aliens towered closer. It was now clear to Paul that tonight's life drawing model was going to be a no show.

The Nudenight inhabitants grew restless. Paul doing what he does best; making a shit situation (arguably) slightly less shit, announced to everybody that he would be tonight's model. A collective groan echoed around what was remaining of Nudenight.

As an atomic bomb fell from the sky, Paul ripped opened his shirt, put on some sunnies and grabbed a beer. He stood on the stage and positioned himself for the first and only pose of the night. As the atomic bomb went off, Paul grinned. Although everyone's demise was a few seconds away, tonight was Nudenight, and tonight was going to be a great night."

Wallace Review:

An intense level of detail, with a great narrative (on and off the canvas). It shows a very deep understanding of the venue and the context. There are so many individual bits I like ... (thank you for drawing those boots like that, they are magical). On the night I noted that the works saccharine overtones were holding the piece back, but on reflection I’m fine with the thick fantasy filter applied.

This work is technically fantastic enough to win, but lacks a mullet due to what I think is a compositional issue. The work has a “blanket” complexity.

As a commercial level story illustration, it is faultless. Or page in a graphic novel, but as a gallery work I need compositional heirachy. I’m not saying I had an issue with the level of detail, but my brain wants a central dominating focal point. And then only on a more intimate closer reveal should I be discovering the easter eggs. As a single stand alone artwork, I want some exponential variation in scale and awareness to the elements within the composition. If it worked as a purely striking visual when viewed from 4 metres away, I could be drawn in and then exposed to the detail up close ... that kind of dynamic with the viewer would have had me debating potential full mulletness. It is cool though, thank you.

The Wallace Medal for Troubled Boys goes to…

$50 art supplies from Eckersley’s

GONE FISHING

$0.00

Artist: Gorby

Size: 2000×1500

Medium: Stencil on Wall

NFS

Artist Statement What do you think it means ?

Wallace Review:

This guy gets it. Civil dissobediant process. Escoteric penis refrences. Accidental historic accuracy. Permenance vs Flux. Well done, the more I live with it the more I realise how much of an actual contender it was.

I have a problem with your painted word “Wall”. It’s good, but I needed it to be the element that pulled the randomness of the ongoing graffiti and the stencil into one. There is a cohesion that I just feel could have been pushed further and which then would have created ownership.

Thank you for all who played the game, we have most of the works on show in the new front gallery at 9 Fitzroy street Marrickville, and on the doodler website.

(I’m about 60% through my promised critiques so thank you for your patience.)

Looking for a last minute Christmas gift idea, why not buy a loved one a painting of me. Original and exciting artworks made by real local artists. Buy now, regret later.

We are also open throughout the holidays and available for that little nude get away you deserve so much, so check the site for times as I’m doing a few Tuesday and Saturday night sessions.

Merry
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