We are thrilled to announce that Nicole Kelly has been selected for the Salon des Refusés 2025 for her Wynne entry ‘Waterhole Gums.
Each year the panel of judges is invited to go behind the scenes of the judging process for the annual Archibald Prize for portraiture and Wynne Prize for landscape painting and figure sculpture at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, to select an exhibition from the many hundreds of works entered in both prizes but not chosen for the official award exhibition.
The Salon des Refusés exhibition at the S.H. Ervin Gallery has established an excellent reputation that rivals the selections in the ‘official’ exhibition, with works selected for quality, diversity, humour and experimentation, and which examine contemporary art practices, different approaches to portraiture and responses to the landscape.
In her statement for the work, Kelly states:
‘Waterhole Gums’ is an accumulated response to the arid zone of remote Fowlers Gap that reflects on a tender love of the land and the flurry of bird life around the waterhole after the rain. My work is motivated by a sensitivity to the passing of time and reveals an ongoing attempt to portray reality in a way that liaises not with literal representation or illusion but feeling, memory and thought.
The Salon des Refusés opens Sat 10 May 2025 and continues until Sun 27 July 2025 at S.H Ervin Gallery.
