Vanila Netto has won the 2006 Photographic Portrait Prize for her portrait The magnanimous beige wrap part 1 - (contraption). Vanila receives a prize of $20,000. This is the fourth year the prize has been awarded. It is an acquisitive award. The subject of Vanila Netto's portrait is Nicholas J McColl, who has a degree in Fine Arts and is an industrial designer working and lecturing in Melbourne, where he was born. "Nicholas and I became friends through his wife Najda, with whom I shared an artist's studio in Surry Hills a few years ago," says Netto. "Nicholas to me is the contemporary embodiment of the work/live/play energy that once existed among the Russian constructivists of the pre-Stalin era." The portrait is part of a triptych. Part 2 is now exhibiting at the 2006 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art and Part 3 is yet to be produced. The photograph was taken with a medium-format analogue camera and negative film, which was digitally printed. Born in Brazil in 1963, Netto lives and works in Sydney. She has a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Honours) from the College of Fine Arts, University of NSW, and is currently doing a PhD there in the School of Media Arts/Photomedia. She has previously been a finalist in the Photographic Portrait Prize in 2003 and 2005 and was highly commended in the 2005 Helen Lempriere Travelling Art Scholarship. She had her first solo exhibition at the Sherman Galleries in Sydney in 2004 and has participated in numerous group shows including the 2006 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art, 21st century modern and 2004: Australian culture now at the National Gallery of Victoria. In 2003-04 she undertook a residency at the Moya Dyring Studio at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris with a grant from the Art Gallery of NSW. Her work is in the collection of the Art Gallery of NSW and in national and international private collections. Judges Edmund Capon, Lindy Lee and Rosemary Laing said: "Vanila Netto's photograph is not a straight portrait in the traditional sense and we were intrigued by its interpretative and directorial qualities: a figure in space wrapped up in tape which twirls around the subject's body and mischievously out the top of the picture frame. It is also an exquisite print with beautiful subtle tones." The judges also wish to make special mention of Hossein Valamanesh's Nesting, and Kezia Littlemore's compelling and moving portrait, Adela Parramatta. The Archibald, Wynne & Sulman Prizes and the Photographic Portrait Prize
25 March - 28 May 2006 Art Gallery of New South Wales
Art Gallery Road, The Domain, Sydney Media information
Susanne Briggs (02) 9225 1791 m 0412 268 320 e. susanneb@ag.nsw.gov.au
Claire Martin (02) 9225 1734 m 0414 437 588 e.clairem@ag.nsw.gov.au | 
