2010 Moran Prize Winners

2010 Moran Prize Winners

The winners of this year's 2010 Moran Prizes were announced on the 10th of August at the State Library of NSW, selected from an exceptional field of 239,000 entries.

For the second consecutive year, Dean Sewell has been awarded first prize of $80,000 in the Open Section of the Moran Contemporary Photographic Prize, for his work titled Cockatoo Is. Ferry.

Brisbane-based artist Michael Zavros has been named the $150,000 winner of the 2010 Doug Moran National Portrait Prize for his work titled, Phoebe is Dead/McQueen.

Moran Contemporary Photographic Prize - Open Section 2010 winner: Dean Sewell for Cockatoo Is. Ferry
100 x 68 cm

"I was simply reacting to the environment with my camera."

Dean Sewell has made his name as an independent documentary photographer, concentrating his gaze on the social implications of the new globalised world economy and the environmental consequences of climate change.

Dean exhibits regularly in Australia and internationally, most recently at his solo show Dystopia at Charles Hewitt Gallery. He was the winner of the 2009 Moran Contemporary Photography Prize for a work borne out of a three-year study of the Murray-Darling Basin in Australia and has received three World Press Photo Awards (2000, 2002, 2005) for works covering the transition of East Timor to independence, Australian bushfires and the 2004 Tsunami aftermath in Aceh, respectively. He was awarded Australian Press Photographer of the Year in 1994 and 1998. In 2000 Dean co-founded OCULI photographic collective. He is represented by Charles Hewitt Gallery.

Doug Moran National Portrait Prize 2010 winner: Michael Zavros for Phoebe is dead/McQueen
Oil on canvas, 170 x 150 cm

"Until I became a parent I didn't fear death. Now, as I wait for sleep in the dark of night, I am visited by visions of my children befalling some tragedy and being taken from me. So now I do. This painting confronts the unthinkable as though the very act of painting it could somehow prevent it. Painted to exact life size in tiny precious detail, this is a personal memento mori. Here my 'dead daughter' is draped in my wife's Alexander McQueen scarf. It is Phoebe's favourite. Phoebe is my eldest daughter."

Michael Zavros' exhibitions include Primavera, MCA, 2000, Contemporary Australia: Optimism, Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane, 2008, and Wilderness, Art Gallery of New South Wales, 2010. He is the winner of the Jacaranda Acquisitive Drawing Award (2002), the MCA Primavera Collex Art Award (2004) and theRobert Jacks Drawing Prize (2005). In 2004, 2005, 2006 and 2009 he was a finalist in the Archibald Prize and runner-up in the Doug Moran National Portrait Prize. Michael has been the recipient of three Australia Council overseas residencies.

His work is held in numerous public and private collections in Australia and internationally.