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Paula Mahoney announced as recipient of the inaugural Wai Tang Commissioning Award at Monash Gallery of Art
Over the last 16 years, the William and Winifred Bowness Photography Prize has emerged as an important annual survey of contemporary photographic practice in Australia and one of the most prestigious prizes in the country.
MGA and the MGA Foundation are proud to introduce the inaugural Wai Tang Commissioning Award. The Wai Tang Commissioning Award is a new initiative of the MGA Foundation as part of the 2022 Bowness Photography Prize. Paula Mahoney is the first artist who has been selected from the 2021 Bowness Photogaphy Prize to be awarded the $10,000 commission. Her exhibition will coincide with the 2022 Bowness Photography Prize exhibition with one work entering MGA’s significant collection of Australian photographs in honour of Wai Tang’s legacy.
Wai Tang served on MGA’s Committee of Management from 2018 until she passed away in 2020. Tang’s expertise included more than 30 years of experience in the retail and wholesale manufacturing industries where she held senior executive roles and non-executive directors’ roles in public and private companies. Her commitment to the visual and performing arts was demonstrated through her leadership roles and philanthropic support. The Wai Tang Commissioning Award has been established by her husband, Kee Wong, to recognise and honour her significant impact on the arts and preserve her legacy within MGA’s collection and exhibition history.
The background
In 2018, to accompany the Bowness Photography Prize exhibition, MGA launched an annual exhibition series to showcase and explore the practice of a past finalist. This initiative provided MGA with the opportunity to support, profile and champion past Bowness Photography Prize finalists and invites audiences to delve into their practice in more detail. The Wai Tang Commissioning Award enables the continuation and development of this initiative with a three year commitment to award a commissioning fee to a selected artist.
The process
MGA’s curatorial team nominated four artists from the 2021 Bowness Photography Prize to be considered for the Wai Tang Commissioning Award. The final selection committee comprised MGA Director, Anouska Phizacklea, MGA Foundation Chair and previous MGA Director, Kallie Blauhorn and Kee Wong.
‘We are so delighted and honoured that Paula Mahoney has been awarded the inaugural Wai Tang Commissioning Award. Mahoney’s work in the 2021 Bowness Photography Prize was one that spoke to our times, of loss and mourning, and the fragility of life; a fitting recipient to celebrate Wai Tang’s enduring legacy to the arts and photography.’
— MGA Director, Anouska Phizacklea
‘We are humbled by the gift received from the Wong/Tang family to honour the late Wai Tang. Wai and her husband Kee have been incredible supporters of Australian culture, specifically in the arts and fashion sectors. This award continues their legacy by recognising and rewarding the best of contemporary photography which was a growing passion for Wai.’
— MGA Foundation Chair and previous MGA Director, Kallie Blauhorn
‘Wai had established a successful career in business and a love for fashion and the arts. She had a generous heart and nurturing spirit and had shown her love for the arts through philanthropic giving. This award is in recognition of her passion to support artists of all forms of art. Wai’s success has been achieved from humble beginnings and she understood the struggle for recognition and success. This award, in her name, is to support an artist in the way she wished she had been supported throughout her career. It is to be a moment of recognition of their talent, their potential, and to provide them with a platform that enables them to find the success they deserve.’
— Kee Wong
About Paula Mahoney
Paula Mahoney’s work represents an ongoing examination of death and personal loss. She investigates lamentation as a necessary yet optimistic viewpoint that suggests psychological shifts, creating both an awareness of our limitations and our connection to each other and to a greater whole. She uses performative photography and portraiture, frequently using herself, daughter, niece and sisters, wearing clothes of dead loved ones.
Mahoney holds a PhD at Monash University, Using photography as an analogy in the experience of death and mourning, and has taken up residencies in Alice Springs, Mauritania and Queenstown. She received two Highly Commended in the prestigious Olive Cotton Award and has been a finalist in many major art prizes in Australia and abroad. Her work is held in public and private collections in Australia, and in private collections n the UK and the USA.
‘I am particularly interested in the time between when a loved one dies and the onset of rigour mortis, when death’s presence is amplified and we are presented with the horror of what will happen to us all. It is in these moments that we share in our universal fragility and vulnerability.’
— Paula Mahoney, artist
Paula Mahoney exhibition dates: 29 September – 13 November 2022
Bowness Photography Prize 2022
Entries open: Wednesday 11 May 2022
Entries close: 5pm (AEST) Wednesday 29 June 2022
Finalists announced: Thursday 28 July 2022
Exhibition dates: 29 September – 13 November 2022
Award announcement: Thursday 6 October 2022
Image captions:
Paula MAHONEY
Jump on through (to the other side) 2021
from the series Dis/appear II
pigment ink-jet print
160.0 x 107.0 cm
courtesy of the artist
Portrait of Wai Tang
