Cultural Development Consulting

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Congratulations to Lyndal Irons

winner of the 2015 Pool Grant

The grant provides $10,000 to an emerging artist to enable them to create a body of photographs to be exhibited twelve months later at the next award ceremony. The award is organised and presented by the Pool Collective, a group of eminent Australian photographers who put their own money together to create the annual grant as a way to support an emerging photographer in taking a significant step forward in their career.

Lyndal Irons will use the grant to complete her project about life on the Parramatta Road in Sydney. One of the worst urban arterial routes in Australia, this thoroughfare is due to be radically upgraded under the New South Wales WestConnex initiative. Lyndal’s project is to document the wide diversity of people and places, residents and businesses that have settled along the old road, before they are swept away by the renewal program

This was the third year that Alasdair Foster was the invited external judge for the grant. In selecting the winning proposal, he said: “Lyndal Irons’ images demonstrate a skilful eye and the ability to apply a varied approach to image making that suits the kind of diverse subject matter that this project will afford. Her sense of composition and visual dynamic is strong.”

He went on: “This is a timely project, in that the area will change radically in the coming years: Lyndal will be recording environments and ways of living and working that will soon disappear. The project has a very clear focus and locality, with the potential to produce a valuable long-term social and community document.”

The grant winner was announced to packed house at District 01 Gallery in Sydney, where a beautiful exhibition by the photographer Kate Disher-Quill  was on display. Entitled Right Hear, Right Now  this new body of work explores the diverse experiences of partial and complete deafness. Through a combination of photography, multimedia and installation, she has created a layered evocation of what it is like to live with a hearing loss. Kate Disher-Quill won the Pool Grant in 2014 and this sensitive and substantive exhibition is the result.

The photographers of the Pool Collective are: Danny Eastwood, Simon Harsent, Christopher Ireland, Sean Izzard, Ingvar Kenne, Steven Popovich and Juliet Taylor

Images (from the top):

Lyndal Irons accepts the Pool Grant 2015

(left to right): Juliet Taylor*, Sean Izzard*, Kate Disher-Quill (artist), Christopher Ireland*, Hannah Nixon (Pool PR), Ingvar Kenne* and Alasdair Foster (* members of the Pool Collective)

Guests at the opening of Right Hear, Right Now at District 1 Gallery

All images © James Ambrose

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