30 Portraits 30 Days is based on projects Fantauzzo undertook in New York and Hong Kong. Fantauzzo is friends with Ledger’s father, Kim, who is managing a film project, The Return of Suzie Wong, that the artist is co-directing with Barney Howells. Fantauzzo said Ledger senior was passionate about the film industry and a great support. ”He always looks out for me and gives me advice.” The painter is heading to LA in the new year to talk to scriptwriters, then in March he’ll be lining up his fashionable clothes as one of the faces of the L’Oreal Melbourne Fashion Festival. He’ll need eight outfits for eight days.

Painter needs a fit arm for marathon.

This October sees Fantauzzo unveil his highly anticipated Suzie Wong series, 50 years after the popular book The World of Suzie Wong was first published. Collaborating with Australian film director Barney Howells, the series, comprising fifteen major pieces that merge painting with narrative story-telling, will be showcased at 10 Chancery Lane.

Crossing over into film territory is nothing new for the young artist. Last year Fantauzzo and acclaimed director Baz Luhrman (he sexed up Romeo and Juliet and showed us that Nicole Kidman could sing, sort of, in Moulin Rouge) presented a cross-media installation at Art HK 10, The Creek, which fused painting with moving image.  For the Suzie Wong project Fantauzzo and Howells travelled to Hong Kong in search of a modern interpretation of the story, trawling the streets of Central and Wanchai for location scouting, and casting locals rather than celebrities, lending the works a grittier authenticity.

The idea for the exhibition is to present the collection, which will depict key moments in their reworked narrative, alongside illustrated storyboards that flesh out the story. In its entirety the exhibition will allow the audience to experience the narrative as if they were viewing the movie itself. The works will have the scale and resonance of cinematic pieces, while the storyboards evoke the pre-production process, and have the feel of a graphic novel.

The exhibition will debut at 10 Chancery Lane 6 October 2011.

http://www.10chancerylanegallery.com/

But it was all made worthwhile this week when Fantauzzo scooped the prestigious $50,000 Metro Gallery Art Award, the nation’s richest prize for artists 35 and under.

Fantauzzo, who has already this year won the Archibald Packing Room Prize and the Doug Moran Portrait Prize, said he was humbled to win the Metro award for his painting of a man who has just been hit by a car.

The artist modelled for the painting (painting from a photo of himself) and, eerily, was knocked from his motorbike and suffered a broken collarbone the day after he finished the work.
“It was a real sense of déjà vu. It was a pretty weird sensation I can tell you. Lady Luck was certainly on my side that night,” he said.

Carlton artist Andi Tham was also shortlisted for the award for her striking image of a Nike sneaker made from a McDonald’s hamburger.

While the painting could be interpreted as an attack on American consumer culture, artist Tham said she intended it to be ambiguous.

“I’m interested in everyday objects that carry meaning for people, rather than trying to push an idea about what that might mean. I always paint things that I kind of love in some way,” she said.

via MELBOURNE LEADER 29 July 2011

Fantauzzo thanked his lucky stars that he was there to accept the award, after a strange coincidence saw him knocked off his motorbike by a taxi the day after he had finished the work.

“I had been working late and the roads were fairly deserted. I was quietly heading back home on my bike when a taxi in front of me suddenly did a U turn and knocked me for six,” he said.

“It was pretty serious. I had to have emergency surgery immediately for a broken collar bone and I was severely bruised and cut up in general. But it could have been a lot worse. Oddly enough, I had painted the work from photographs of myself as the model, so it was a real sense of déjà vu. It was a pretty weird sensation I can tell you. Lady Luck was certainly on my side that night,” he added.

After his near miss, Fantauzzo has had luck on his side in terms of art prizes in 2011. Before winning Australia’s richest art award for artists aged 35 and under, he won the 2011 Archibald Packing Room Prize with a portrait of Matt Moran in April, and the 2011 Dough Moran Portrait Prize for his painting of Baz Luhrmann in May.

Fantauzzo also picked up the Archibald People’s Choice Prize in 2008 for his portrait of Heath Ledger, and again in 2009 for one of Brandon Walters.

Fantauzzo was also a finalist in the Metro in 2008 and 2009, but was finally able to cross the line this year.

33 year old Fantauzzo was born in the UK and immigrated to Australia when he was four years old. He first picked up a paintbrush when he was 19 and today lives with his wife and son in the Docklands.
Speaking before he knew he had won, Fantauzzo said, “I would be incredibly honoured to win the Metro. It’s not really about the money, although that would give me some breathing space to focus on my art and not worry about where the next pay cheque is coming from for a while. It’s more about the prestige and being in the company of some really iconic past winners such as Sam Leach, Ben Quilty and Marcus Wills, all of whom have gone on to have incredible careers.“
“One thing I do know. If I win, the first thing I am going to do is to throw a big party to say thank you to all my friends who have been so supportive to me over the last 15 years,” he added.
Fantauzzo’s winning entry in the Metro is a huge 170 x 110 cm oil painting called The Creek 1977 which he produced as part of a film project he is working on with Baz Luhrmann.
The Chair of the Metro Selection Panel, the Hon Jeff Kennett AC, former Victorian Premier and Arts Minister, said, “Fantauzzo’s work is multi-layered. His topic and figures are very contemporary and yet they are painted in a dramatic, semi Baroque style which underlines the intensity of the scene. The technique and composition is beautiful. And the emotion of the drama we are witnessing is palpable. Altogether, it is a profoundly haunting painting which pulsates with the dreamlike quality of an old but never forgotten memory.”

Joel Rea’s entry ‘Moment of Truth’, was Highly Commended by the judges.
“Rea’s painting is a vivid exploration of the value of life in the face of death which was inspired by recent natural disasters. We would like to congratulate him on this very powerful, thought provoking work,” said Kennett.

The 2011 Selection Panel comprises the Hon Jeff Kennett AC former Victorian Premier and Arts Minister (Chair); with Fenella Kernebone, Presenter of the ABC TV’s Art Nation Program; the Rev Dr Arthur Bridge AM, founder of Ars Musica Australis, a charitable foundation supporting the creative arts; and human rights advocate Julian Burnside AO QC.

Twenty-five finalists from all over Australia are in the 2011 Metro Gallery Art Award exhibition which runs from now until 30 July at Metro Gallery, 1214 High Street, Armadale, Victoria.

via ARTS HUB 28 JULY 2011

In a strange twist of fate, Fantauzzo, who is also the model in the painting, was knocked off his motor bike by a taxi the day after he had finished working on it. “I had been working late and the roads were fairly deserted,” he said. “I was quietly heading back home on my bike when a taxi in front of me suddenly did a U turn and knocked me for six,” he said. “It was pretty serious. I had to have emergency surgery immediately for a broken collar bone and I was severely bruised and cut up in general. But it could have been a lot worse. Oddly enough, I had painted the work from photographs of myself as the model, so it was a real sense of déjà vu. It was a pretty weird sensation I can tell you. Lady Luck was certainly on my side that night.”

It’s been a lucky year all round for Fantauzzo who scored an Art Prize hat trick today when he won Australia’s richest art award for artists aged 35 and under. He also won the 2011 Archibald Packing Room Prize with a portrait of Matt Moran in April and the 2011 Doug Moran Portrait Prize for his painting of Baz Luhrmann in May. (He also won the Archibald People’s Choice Prizes in 2008 – Heath Ledger; and in 2009 – Brandon Walters).

The Chair of the Metro Selection Panel, the Hon Jeff Kennett AC, former Victorian Premier and Arts Minister, said: “Fantauzzo’s work is multi-layered. His topic and figures are very contemporary and yet they are painted in a dramatic, semi Baroque style which underlines the intensity of the scene. The technique and composition is beautiful. And the emotion of the drama we are witnessing is palpable. Altogether, it is a profoundly haunting painting which pulsates with the dreamlike quality of an old but never forgotten memory.”

“It was pretty serious. I had to have emergency surgery immediately for a broken collar bone and I was severely bruised and cut up in general. But it could have been a lot worse,” he says.

Fantauzzo produced the work as part of a project he is currently completing with film director Baz Luhrmann.

Now in it’s ninth year, the Metro Art Award is an annual $50,000 prize open to emerging artists under the age of 35.

This year the selection panel included former Victorian premier Jeff Kennett, ABC TV arts presenter Fenella Kernebone and human rights advocate Julian Burnside.

Previous winners include Paul White, Jackson Slattery, Sam Leech and Giles Alexander.

Cassie Newman
Vincent Fantauzzo wins the Metro Art Award – Australian Art Collector.

It follows the Archibald Packing Room Prize for his portrait of celebrity chef Matt Moran in April, and the Doug Moran Portrait Prize for his painting of director Baz Luhrmann in May. The entry that won him the prize was a large oil painting called “The Creek 1977″, produced as part of an ongoing film and installation project with Luhrmann. The pair wrote a story about a drifting character who enters the lives of a small community in outback Australia during the 1970s. The male figure in the painting is a self-portrait of the artist, who appears to be dying in a scene of operatic quality.

Its strong use of lighting references Caravaggio, and the painting of the Renaissance artists Fantauzzo has explored in previous works. The judging panel included former Victorian premier Jeff Kennett, ABC TV’s Art Nation presenter Fenella Kernebone and Ars Musica Australis founder Reverend Doctor Arthur Bridge.The 25 finalists from across the country will feature in the 2011 Metro Gallery Art Award exhibition, which will run until July 30 at Metro Gallery, 1214 High Street, Armadale.

via Sydney Morning Herald.

The 33-year-old Melbourne artist has agreed to let us tag along today to get a sense of life inside the quest for an annual art prize, but for now he wants to remain outside that bubble, lest it burst, so he hangs back in an anteroom behind his wife, Michelle, and 18-month-old son, Luca, inside a little space filled with a kind of paper forest art installation. Lurking in front of those cardboard trees, he now remains perfectly still, his knotted stomach heavy from a morning meal of smoked salmon and scrambled eggs with Tabasco sauce.

He is wondering, as he wondered over breakfast, whether he was invited here today as the runner-up, whether he will be one of the “highly commended” placegetters, or whether finally – after entering the Moran Prize three times and the Archibald Prize seven times – this is his moment to win a big one. “I’m hiding out here. You go,” he says, grimacing and nudging me lightly into the gallery, urging me toward the paintings on show – including his own, a photorealist rendering of his mate, film director Baz Luhrmann – while he stays put. “I don’t want to see the competition.” Fantauzzo is basically worried that if he sees Adam Cullen, for instance, then the award must be going to the grungy Sydney painter and not him. Fantauzzo is not at all a tormented artist, but in order to win you have to deal with the torment of losing, a tension that for him reached its zenith then nadir in 2008 when his portrait of his friend the actor Heath Ledger was the much publicised front-runner then runner-up in the Archibald. (He entered this year with a portrait of another famous pal, chef Matt Moran).

As the ceremony begins, Fantauzzo leans forward, but he fixes his gaze on nothing and no one, simultaneously asking himself, “What am I going to say if I win?” and “Don’t jinx it.” The judge begins describing the victor, detailing an “almost photographical work” – check – by an artist they’ve “seen many times before” – check – whose work is “always incredibly detailed” – check. “I think it’s very easy to dismiss work that is technically beautiful as nothing more than just a clever trick, something that is just cleverly crafted,” the judge says. “That couldn’t be less true in this perfectly rendered work.” Check. “And the winner of the 2011 Doug Moran Portrait Prize is …” Two weeks later, Fantauzzo is standing in front of a mural-size image of his toddler son, who has his eyes. He conjured the massive inquisitive face as he always does, layer by layer with turps and oil paint. Then he surrounded the head with a kaleidoscope of colour blocks, almost like pixels of acrylic, spray paint and gouache.

We’re inside his South Melbourne studio, an old classroom in what used to be J.H. Boyd Girls’ High School, and he is explaining how he started sketching as a child, often in commission housing around Glenroy and Essendon and Broadmeadows. The middle child of five, Fantauzzo now lives in a comfortable Docklands apartment, but spent many of his early years in temporary homes, often filled with cousins and friends. “It was wild. We could draw on the walls,” he says. “Our walls were like that mural, except with grey-lead pencils.” Growing up, he struggled with reading and writing, and found trouble often. “Almost every day. I was in some sort of fight,” he says, hard as it is to imagine a violent streak in such a soft-spoken man. “I felt that by having a bad reputation I was at least good at being bad.” Unable to cope with study, he left school at 14 to work as a cook, putting in maybe 70 or 80 hours a week in his early teens.

Boxing gave him direction. Jack Rennie, a one-time trainer of the late Lionel Rose, became a mentor, and Rose was one of the first people to sit for a portrait when Fantauzzo started painting at 19. He applied to university a year later and won a place at RMIT, telling the university he actually completed high school. “No one checked. A lot of it was interview-based, so I got away with it,” he says, sheepishly. “When I started I had no idea who painted the Mona Lisa. I didn’t know who Monet was. All I knew was I liked to paint.” Struggling with the scholarly component, he occasionally paid other students to write his essays. Then he chose the wrong student. “They completely plagiarised the whole thing, so then I got busted for plagiarism,” he says. “I had to think to myself, what’s worse – tell them that I plagiarised or tell them the real story and see what they say?” He came clean and found the university surprisingly sympathetic, straight away testing him for a learning disability. “That’s when I found out dyslexia was the problem. It was like a light went off.” With the help of a disability liaison, he went on to complete his masters, then won an artistic residency at St Vincent’s Hospital. He slowly developed his realist style and mailed out a folio to gallerists including Dianne Tanzer in Fitzroy. “When I found it, I could tell – even on a bad photocopy – that his technique was very refined,” says Tanzer. “You could see that this guy could paint.” In 2006, she offered him a solo show, which sold out, as did shows in 2007, 2008 and 2009.

In the interim, Fantauzzo travelled to work in Hong Kong and New York, painting models (Chanel lman), actors (Justin Theroux), athletes (Lennox Lewis) and musicians (Tim Rogers) and sometimes befriending them, “I’ve found when I paint people I know well, I get a better result. And when other people know that person, they connect to the image more, so I guess I need to keep meeting interesting people,” he says. “But to choose famous people strategically I don’t think is a good idea.” He makes friends in the same ad hoc manner as anyone. He has known the musician N’fa of the hiphop group 1200 Techniques for years, for instance, and N’fa introduced him to Ledger. He knows Matt Moran (no relation to the portrait prize founder Doug Moran) only because his wife spotted the chef at a bar in Sydney and invited him over to their table for drinks.

Making new mates isn’t a calculated cultivation, and painting a portrait, he says, is also a way of getting to know someone. Earlier this year, he ate at Moran’s flagship restaurant, Aria, and there said a quick hello to former Silverchair frontman Daniel Johns. Fantauzzo said later, “He’s someone who I think would be interesting to paint,” but he might as well have said, “He’s someone who I think would be interesting to meet.” As a creative professional, his connections are bound to become collaborations. Much like last year, thundering across India on a motorbike trip with Luhrmann, each riding a donated Royal Enfield Bullet Classic 500, stopping to paint murals on village walls throughout. They raised money for charity with a photographic exhibition later, and also worked on a project for the Hong Kong Art Fair, The mural Fantauzzo is finishing now is headed there, too. He draws gracefully, purple Texta in hand, creating a bald head with a long, bulbous nose framed within a chinless face, one of dozens of feint figures inside those bright pixels on the expansive canvas, others filled by Mickey Mouse, Winnie the Pooh, Pinocchio. Fantauzzo works from early morning to past midnight most days to get it done, breaking for a few hours, for dinner with Michelle and bath time with Luca. This is his day-to-day schedule when gearing up for any show. “You’re happy but you’re nervous,” he says. You do well, and then have an exhibition, and then you get critiqued. And it can get nasty.”

A few weeks ago, Fantauzzo saw exactly how vitriolic it can get. Under the headline “Portrait of modern mediocrity”, a columnist took a swipe at the artist, opining that his version of portraiture is to painting “what lip-synching is to singing”. Days later, the same critic described Fantauzzo’s painting of Matt Moran as “repellent”, along with the summation that a person can know whether they understand anything about painting by simply looking at his glossy image of the chef: “If you think this is a good picture, the answer is in the negative.” Of course, Fantauzzo is hardly the first to come under fire in the push and pull between realism and abstraction. William Dargie, who won the Archibald Prize more times than anyone (eight) saw his final winner – a 1956 portrait of Albert Namatjira – lambasted as an effete portrait with “a general air of having nothing to say”, “It is all of no use,” the critics cried. “Colour photography, hand done, wins the day.” Gabriella Coslovich, senior arts writer for The Age, says it’s almost too easy for critics to write off Fantauzzo as a mere “draughtsman” and not a real “blood and guts” artist – and yet she partially agrees with such assessments. Take the portrait of Moran surrounded by lamb carcasses – a technically difficult work that won the Packing Room Prize at the Archibalds, but left her cold.

For Coslovich, the other “meat painting” in the exhibition, Geoffrey Dyer’s portrait of David Walsh, is the better work – the creepy image capturing the subject’s awkwardness and gall, Fantauzzo has twice won the People’s Choice award at the Archibald, and Coslovich doesn’t begrudge him his popularity with the masses. “His style is straightforward and they can see for themselves whether he’s captured the likeness of his subject or not,” she says. “He’s not some obscure conceptualist playing clever games and making them feel stupid for not ‘getting’ his work.” Yet his work arouses a mixture of curiosity and dismay. “I just wish he’d let loose a little more, go a little deeper, channel something more about his subjects. It will be interesting to see how Vincent’s work develops – but his shtick is clearly working for him, why would he change?” Besides, the ballsy bravura brushwork so often lauded by more conceptual art lovers can be just as much a crowd-pleasing “trick” as photorealism, Ben Guilty won this year’s Archibald with a painterly portrait of Margaret 011ey, for example, and it was still slammed as “vulgar, meretricious and gimmicky”. Fantauzzo won’t lose any sleep over a few words, either. “It’s not going to affect what I do. I thought it was so over the top that it just looks mean-spirited – almost like the mean judge on Australian Idol,” he says, stifling a laugh. “That’s all right, I got paid,”

He’s currently painting Professor James Best, head of the school of medicine at the University of Melbourne – a job worth a little under $20,000 (although less than half that would end up in Fantauzzo’s pocket). Professor Margaret Gardner, the vice-chancellor and president of RMIT, is another who sat for him recently for a similar sum. About half his work is commission-based portraiture. It is not uncommon for figurative artists to make a living this way – much like the salaried court painters of the Renaissance. “They did the royal family, they did the church, and then they’d do their own work,” says Dianne Tanzer. “Vincent gets to hone his skills, he enjoys getting to know the person he’s painting, he gets to live on that money, and he becomes part of the great tradition and continuum of portrait painting.”

Back in the library’s cardboard forest in Sydney, Fantauzzo stretches his legs. His muscles are cramping up now, he whispers, maybe from nerves. He swallows hard, and then Michael Zavros, one of this year’s judges and last year’s winner, reads out a name. Fantauzzo’s name. He has won the prize. Releasing a long-held breath, his eyes light up and he creeps towards the podium. Luca is dozing in a pram. Michelle is filming her hubby on his iPhone as he utters the first words of a brief acceptance speech: “I’m so nervous I feel like vomiting.” Organisers play a clip they recorded only minutes earlier of Luhrmann in Manhattan: “Vinnie, if you’re there, congratulations man,” he says to the camera. “One knows a little bit about what it means to put yourself out there creatively – to be in the cut and thrust of critique and comment – but in the end the work speaks for itself.” A scrum of reporters ask him what it takes to become a great artist as he stands in front of his softhued image of black and gray conveying both silence and noise, serenity and tumult – a piece the judges called “an emotional tour de force”.

His pocket buzzes – a congratulatory text from Baz. He takes a call from Moran, too, answering with one of his happy Anglo affectations: “Hey chap” or “Hi, old boy.” Louise Doyle, director of the National Portrait Gallery and a judge, stands to the side of the action, explaining that portraiture prizes receive so much attention because they are a voyeuristic, interactive gamble – and Australians love to gamble. “It really is about the field, who puts their hat in the ring.” For working artists, particularly those who invest a lot of time in figurative work, the contests represent a real opportunity for recognition and advancement. The impact of a win is huge, starting with immediate print articles and sound bites and vision clips. Financially, you have some breathing room, whether knocking off a chunk of your mortgage (as Zavros did last year) or taking a long-desired three-month trip to Italy for the winter (as Fantauzzo plans to do this year).

“Mostly, you have the freedom to be yourself and follow your nose and make your work for no other reason than to make your work,” says Zavros. “That’s the greatest gift.” Conservative knockers only add to the drama and intrigue. For them, the Archibald and the Moran may not have a tremendous amount of artistic credibility, says Zavros, but saying so out loud is almost daggy. “Hot artists with a capital A will have a crack at them, and the punters love them,” he says. “This is a difficult country, in some ways, to make art and be an artist, so if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘ern.” We join Fantauzzo near the end of the day. His victory opens the wrought-iron gates of Swifts, the Moran family’s Darling Point mansion, said to be most expensive piece of real estate in Sydney.

We arrive there for the “winner’s dinner” some time after 9pm and walk up a winding driveway to the neo-Gothic castle. Inside, the place is set for a party, huge centrepieces of fruit and roses stacked on an endless dinner table, Beethoven playing, canapes being served. The “somewhat surreal” night would continue with servings of delicate dishes introduced by the chef to a motley mix of portrait painters and fashion designers and criminal lawyers chit-chatting past midnight. But, leaving Fantauzzo to relax, I miss that part of the evening, seeing the artist off as he takes a little taste of the good life, perhaps only an appetiser. “Have one before you go,” he says, lifting a fat Sydney rock oyster topped with beluga caviar, and tipping it down his gullet. “Cheers, chap. Life is good.”

The first and only portrait of the late Heath Ledger was done by Fantauzzo in December 2007, weeks before Ledger’s death in January 2008. In the aftermath, Fantauzzo wrestled with whether to enter the portrait in the 2008 Archibald Prize before receiving the blessing of Ledger’s family. The painting won the People’s Choice Award, was runner-up for the top prize and introduced the artist to the public. Fantauzzo later turned down significant cash offers for the work, gifting it to the Ledger family, who in turn donated it to the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Fantauzzo vividly remembers going out in Perth with his friend the night before they worked on the piece: “I’d never seen people go crazy to see someone like they did that night to see him, because it was his home town and he was back. People were lining up, bursting into tears, yelling out stuff. We went to the bathroom and people were tapping on his shoulder. I couldn’t believe how intense it was. And he kept his cool and he was nice to everyone and shook everyone’s hand. We worked on the idea for the painting together. It was about keeping something to yourself, being careful about what you give out and the thoughts you’re having.”

Appeared in Age – Melbourne Magazine click here to read the full article

Twenty-five of Australia’s top emerging artists sipped tentatively on their beers as the sun streamed into Metro Gallery in Armadale yesterday, awaiting the announcement of the next recipient of the award.

Completing a tidy hat-trick of some of Australia’s most highly sought-after art awards, Melbourne-based artist Vincent Fantauzzo stole the show, and was awarded the $50,000 cheque. It follows the Archibald Packing Room Prize for his portrait of celebrity chef Matt Moran in April, and the Doug Moran Portrait Prize for his painting of director Baz Luhrmann in May.

The entry that won him the prize was a large oil painting called “The Creek 1977″, produced as part of an ongoing film and installation project with Luhrmann. The pair wrote a story about a drifting character who enters the lives of a small community in outback Australia during the 1970s.

The male figure in the painting is a self-portrait of the artist, who appears to be dying in a scene of operatic quality.

Its strong use of lighting references Caravaggio, and the painting of the Renaissance artists Fantauzzo has explored in previous works.

The judging panel included former Victorian premier Jeff Kennett, ABC TV’s Art Nation presenter Fenella Kernebone and Ars Musica Australis founder Reverend Doctor Arthur Bridge.

The 25 finalists from across the country will feature in the 2011 Metro Gallery Art Award exhibition, which will run until July 30 at Metro Gallery, 1214 High Street, Armadale.

via Artist scores another top prize.

Click here to view the PDF.