12 April 2006
Monash Art and Design honours student Yvette King has won the $16,000 Baldessin Foundation Travelling Scholarship -- the richest undergraduate sculpture prize in Australia.
The win is a natural progression for the 22-year-old who grew up in Moe and now lives in Collingwood.
"My dad's an engineer and there were no boys in the family," she said. "I've been building things ever since I can remember."
Ms King's winning work, Systems of Care, Patterns 3,5,6 & 7, includes four separate sculptures made from mattress fabrics, vinyl, lead and aluminium.
Comprising 14 separate moveable geometric pieces (six squares and eight triangles), each sculpture folds out flat but can be fitted together to form a geometric modular object that is hard on the outside but soft inside.
The biggest is the size of a small couch - big enough to sit in - and the smallest is like a jewellery box.
Monash Sculpture Studio Coordinator Dr Dan Wollmering said Ms King's work was a conceptually charged piece coupled with technical finesse and gutsy innovation.
"This is a tremendous achievement for Yvette, the studio and the Department of Fine Arts," he said. "With back-to-back Baldessin wins it has reinforced Monash Sculpture Studio's motto 'Be, Do. Achieve.'"
Ms King's win follows the success of Sean Reid last year in the award named after renowned artist George Baldessin and offered by the George Baldessin Memorial Foundation, which aims to support young sculptors in travelling abroad.
She completed the works as part of her third year studies last year. Ms King plans to use her prize money to travel after completing honours this year.
Sculptures shortlisted for the Baldessin Foundation Travelling Fellowship are on show at the Margaret Lawrence Galleries at the Victorian College of the Arts until Friday 15 April.
For more information contact Melissa Marino, Media Communications, on + 61 3 9905 2085 or 0437 121 978. Photographs are available.
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