Hooters is part of an ongoing body of work titled The Hybrid Project, exploring how humans manipulate and interact with the natural world. Working from a studio on a rural property in New South Wales, my animal-hybrids or 'mutants' grew out of an interest in recycling my studio waste. Sculpting leftover oil paint from paintings over a built form and placed on a discarded canvas, I recycle and transform a traditionally two-dimensional material into a three-dimensional one thereby extending my painting practice into new sculptural works and vice versa. The intention is to explore the implications of genetic engineering and selective breeding and and consider the similarities and differences between the role of the artist and that of the scientist.
Craig Waddell was born in Sydney in 1973. He graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Art from the National Art School in 1999 and a MFA (Printmaking) at the Chiang Mai University, Thailand 2004.
Waddell's recent awards include: the 2008 Moya Dyring, Art Gallery of NSW Residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris; the 2007 Marten Bequest Traveling Art Scholarship; and the 2007 Gunnery studio, Artspace Sydney.
He won the Mosman Art Prize in 2010; the previous year he won the Mosman Art Prize People's Choice award and was highly commended. He was awarded the Woollahra Small Sculpture Prize in 2005 and the 2005 Tattersall's Art Prize for landscape painting. He was also winner of the Paddington Art Prize and the Norville Australian Landscape Prize, both in 2004.
Waddell has been a finalist in the Sulman Prize in 2010, Dobell Drawing Prize in 2007 and 2004, the 2007 Glover Prize for Landscape Painting of Tasmania, the 2006 Archibald Prize, the 2006 Kilgour Prize and the ABN AMRO 2006 Emerging Art Award. He was also included in the Salon des Refusés 2006 exhibition.
In 2005 he was a Finalist in the Wynne Prize and in the 2005 Blake Prize for Religious Art. Waddell was highly commended for the Brett Whiteley Travelling Scholarship in 2003, 2001 and 1999 and the Lloyd Rees Memorial Award 2000. He was the recipient of the Waverley Painting Prize 1999 and the Pat Corrigan Travelling Scholarship in 1998.
Waddell has completed residencies in Paris, Thailand, Vietnam and Sydney and has participated in many group shows.
resin, oil paint, glass eye, wooden board
22 x 30 x 23 cm
Finalist
Judges of the 2016 Woollahra Small Sculpture Prize: Wendy Whiteley OAM (Ambassador for the visual arts), Rhonda Davis (Senior Curator at Macquarie University Art Gallery) and Barry Keldoulis (CEO and Group Fairs Director of Art Fairs Australia).
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