Australia’s first art prize dedicated to the digital advertising billboard

Chris Pash
By Chris Pash | 15 December 2020

Melbourne-based artists Catherine Clover and Daniel Kotsimbos are the joint winners of the inaugural $30,000 Fivex Art Prize: Billboard Art Reimagined, Australia’s first award dedicated to digital billboard art. 

The winners were announced by Melbourne’s Lord Mayor Sally Capp at an outdoor exhibition displaying all six finalist works on two prominent billboards opposite Flinders St Railway Station.

The 2020 Fivex Art Prize, sponsored by QMS Media, attracted more than 520 entries from photographers, graphic designers, street artists, illustrators and architects from across Australia, for each for two large-scale LED QMS Media billboards - a horizontal corner wrap and a vertical podium.

The winning and finalist works will be on view at intervals throughout the day, interspersed with, and surrounded by, commercial advertising content, until the end of January.

The award has a cash prize of $30,000 as well as $1,000 for each of the shortlisted artists.

The winners were chosen by a panel of judges: Jane Devery, Curator, Contemporary Art, National Gallery of Victoria; Liss Fenwick, Public Art Project Lead, Melbourne City Council; Gary Deirmendjian, Artist; Charmaine Moldrich, CEO, Outdoor Media Association, and Alessio Cavallaro, Creative Producer, Fivex Art Prize, and media art curator.

2020 judge and Fivex Art Prize producer Alessio Cavallaroon says Catherine Clover and Daniel Kotsimbos have created conceptually rigorous yet contrasting works.

"Both ambiguous and ironic, their works present striking visualisations of Melbourne’s sonic environment," says Cavallaroon.

"While Song Cycle humorously transposes bird songs into human phonetic speech-text patterns, Peak Frequency digitally renders the increasingly opaque multi-layers of our complex acoustic urban space into a dense visual tableau.“

Catherine Clover’s Song Cycle is centred on the phonetic words used by bird field guides to approximate the bird songs of the Indigenous Red Wattlebird and the introduced Common Starling, both local to Melbourne’s CBD.

"Hopefully, viewers will find it irresistible to sound out the bird calls when they pass by the billboards," says Clover. "The texts are site-specific: both birds are common to Melbourne including the city center."

Daniel Kotsimbos’ Peak Frequency presents a visualisation of the sonic patterns recorded at Melbourne Square Crossing to reflect on the public space and routine foundations of our public lives.

QMS Media Group CEO Barclay Nettlefold says the Fivex Prize is unique is a significant new art award that promotes new forms of bold, memorable street art for today’s digital age.

"Both of the winning works push the boundaries of what we expect from street art and billboards alike and QMS is proud to showcase their work on such a powerful digital canvas, right in the heart of Melbourne," he says.

The work offers a tangible expression of the city’s strengthening heartbeat after prolonged COVID lockdown, filling the public space with gentle pulsing light that spills out through the perforated facades and reflects on passers by and the surrounding buildings.

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