ONE of Australia’s most revered print artists has tonight (November 30) been named 2021 “CityNews Artist of the Year” at the 31st annual ACT Arts Awards evening, held in the Canberra Museum & Gallery.

Dianne Fogwell was singled out for an extraordinary year of work, but also for a lifetime of technical mastery of her art, combined with an Alice in Wonderland-like imagination that defies pigeonholing.

“CityNews” editor Ian Meikle presented her with a certificate and a $1000 cheque and craft writer Meredith Hinchliffe gave her a finely-crafted stainless bowl from F!nk studio.

Fogwell said she was delighted to receive the award. 

“Canberra‘s got a lot to be proud of. We’re a city of creative people… if we don’t take ourselves seriously who else is going to do it?” she said.

Praised by critics as the creator of dream-like realities set within a specific Canberra “wonderscape”, she was singled out for her exhibition, “Transient”, at Beaver Galleries in November, 2020, which captured the eerie light cast by the blanket of smoke and unburnt particles over Canberra during the 2019 bushfires.

Fogwell is embedded in the history of Canberra’s visual arts. She was the co-founder of Studio One print workshop, founder/director of the Criterion Press and Fine Art Gallery and a long-time lecturer in printmaking, graphic investigation and lecturer in charge of the Edition + Artists Book Studio at ANU School of Art.

She is also known as a master printer who has editioned prints professionally for prominent Australian artists, including Jason Benjamin, Margaret Olley and Robin Wallace-Crabbe, while maintaining her own art practice.

She has won the Megalo International Print Prize and the Australian Artists’ Book Prize and was recently announced as the winner of the 2021 Geelong Acquisitive Print Awards.

In a busy year, she was an invited artist in the 11th Triennial of Chamalieres in France, won an award of excellence in the inaugural WAMA Art Prize for works on paper in the Grampians, and was commissioned to complete a 45-metre installation for the Geelong Art Gallery.

Fogwell has been an exhibiting artist since 1979 and has been an invited artist to international biennials as far afield as Poland, Belgium, Belgrade, France, London and Korea.

Her work is represented in the National Gallery of Australia, ArtbBank, the Australian War Memorial, the Art Institute of Chicago, The National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington DC and the China Printmaking Museum in Shenzhen.

Earlier in the evening at the ACT Arts Awards, the Helen Tsongas Award for Excellence in Acting was presented by Canberra Theatre director  Alex Budd to Dylan Van Den Berg.

The awards also featured the Critics Circle’s own awards, which went to photographers Sammy Hawker and Melita Dahl; visual artists, Dianne Fogwell, Stephen Harrison, Sharon Peoples, Janet DeBoos, Wendy Teakel and Marie Hagerty; musical artists Dan Walker, Christopher Latham, Rowan Harvey-Martin, the Phoenix Collective, Canberra Symphony Orchestra Chamber Players and jazz pianist, Wayne Kelly; writers Lucy Neave, Irma Gold, Merlinda Bobis and Sarah Rice; dance artists Michelle Heine, Olivia Fyfe, Alex Voorhoeve, Bonnie Neate, Suzie Piani, Liz Lea Dance Company and Quantum Leap; theatre artists Linda Buck, Dylan Van Den Berg, Josh Wiseman, Pippin Carroll and Rebus Theatre; musical theatre artists Lydia Milosavljevic and Helen McFarlane; and film festival producers Deborah Kingsland, Ketura Budd and Hannah de Feyter.