Evan Peacock and Luke Spencer, bachelor of fine arts students, have been named as the 2014 Roloff Beny Excellence in the Photographic Arts Awards recipients. As winners of the prestigious annual awards, the pair will each receive scholarships worth $5,000 to further their creative activities and research.
“The awards recognize academic and artistic achievement in students who have a focused interest in photo-arts,” says Mary Kavanagh, art faculty. “Established by the Roloff Beny Foundation, the awards provide travel opportunities to complement the recipients’ creative activities and research.”
The award money must be used to offset costs incurred by travel, photography equipment and photo supplies.
The Roloff Beny Excellence in the Photographic Arts Awards are competitive and applicants were adjudicated on the quality of their proposals and submitted work.
“The committee considered a high quality and competitive group of applications before making their selection,” says Kavanagh.
Peacock's winning project takes him to one of the world’s most remote locations, the Easter Islands. There he will document current ecological and cultural spaces in relation to the famous historic artifacts of the islands and produce a short, experimental film.
Spencer examines the role of the itinerant photographer and the photographic images made while travelling. On a journey by camper van to Panama City, Panama, Spencer will use 19th century wet-plate techniques to produce singular, labour intensive images.
“The Volkswagon Westfalia I purchased will become a mobile dark room,” explains Spencer. “I plan to travel for four months, taking photographs as I go. It is an ambitious plan and I’m looking forward to it. I was looking for a longer term project that I could totally focus on and this is it.”
He adds that he was surprised and extremely pleased to win the Roloff Beny Award.
In recognition of its excellence in art instruction and research, the University of Lethbridge was one of five Canadian institutions selected in 2005 to receive $860,000 from the Roloff Beny Foundation to generate ongoing funding for student scholarships and infrastructure costs in traditional and digital photo-arts.