Manning Clark House National Cultural Awards
Presented in association with Australian National University, University of Canberra, University of New South Wales (Australian Defence Force Academy) and Australian Catholic University.
Manning Clark House
National Cultural Awards 2011 Announced on 12 December.
Event: Presentation of 2011 Manning Clark House National Cultural Awards
Where: Manning Clark House – 11 Tasmania Circle, Forrest
When: 11am Monday 12 December, 2011
Manning Clark House will publicly announce the winners today of the 2011 MCH National Cultural Awards that recognise ‘outstanding contributions to the quality of Australian cultural life’ made between 1 November 2010 and 31 October 2011.
The winners are:
- Individual – Bill Gammage for The Biggest Estate On Earth - How Aborigines Made Australia (Allen and Unwin, 2011)
- Group / collective – ABC TV for the series The Slap.
Both will receive a prestigious glass award designed by Canberra artists Jenny Farrelly and Ngaio Fitzpatrick, at the presentation event.
President of Manning Clark House, Sebastian Clark, said that in determining the winners ‘culture’ was interpreted in the widest sense: “These awards are now an important and distinguished event on the Australian cultural calendar.”
The winners will join other high profile winners from previous years including Hugh Mackay, Mark McKenna, Ken Inglis, Peter Carey, Tania de Young, Gina Riley and Jane Turner, John Doyle, the National Museum of Australia, the National Library of Australia, the National Film and Sound Archive, Peter Sutton and the National Portrait Gallery.
This year saw all four local universities coming on board as sponsors for the first time as a group: Australian National University; University of Canberra; University of NSW Canberra campus; and Australian Catholic University.
Manning Clark House is a Canberra-based cultural and scholarly organisation based in the former home of Australia’s foremost historian Manning Clark, and his wife and partner Dymphna Clark.
Postscript - The Background to the Physical Awards.
These glass scultures were designed and made by Canberra Artists Ngaio Fitzpatrick and Jenny Farrelly to commemorate the individual and group winners of the 2012 MCH National Cultural Awards.
As project manager for the design of the National Cultural Awards, Jenny (your friendly acting Director of MCH) asked her friend and fellow glass artist, Ngaio Fitzpatrick, to help her design and produce the 2012 MCH National Cultural Awards. Ngaio Fitzpatrick has a degree in Visual Art with the ANU Glass Workshop. Ngaio, with Jenny’s brief, designed and produced these unique glass awards you see here today.
The design reflects aspects of Dymphna’s collection of Cobalt blue glass as well as some of the iconic structures surrounding Lake Burley Griffin over which Manning Clark would have had a view from the library.
The award is made of a combination of Cobalt blue and Crystal clear glass. The process involved hand cutting layers of blue and clear glass to achieve the different gradations of colour and movement. These sheets were individually fused and then layered with clear glass, packed into a mould brought up to 840 degrees then brought down gradually (or annealed) over a period of 7 days to avoid any stress related fractures due to uncontrolled cooling. Once the annealing cycle finished, the awards underwent a series of grinding and polishing processes before being sandblasted with the winners’ details.
Both glass artists developed a passion for glass in 2007 and have grown to love working with this medium over the last 4 years. Jenny ang Ngaio told me that they were honoured and cherished having the opportunity to design the MCH National Cultural Awards this year. It is the first year that this medium has been used for the awards.
Jim Humphries Web Maintainer.