Under cover of a blackout, several Friends, Councillors and former Award winners gathered at the Mundaring Arts Centre to celebrate the talents of the latest Robert Juniper Award for the Arts winner, photographer Olive Lipscombe.

Olive’s connection with the Shire of Mundaring is rooted in her family connection to the area and her working photographic practice investigating family bonds, representation, sense of place and belonging.

In 1968, her grandparents travelled by boat with her four-year-old father as ‘ten-pound poms’ to Western Australia, settling in Mundaring and building a family home where her father grew up. In 2013 her father returned to live in Darlington. The time spent at her father’s home has evolved along with Olive‘s photographic practice. In 2018, her honours work investigated notions of family within a contemporary Australian milieu. Employing photography as a vehicle to re-visualise ‘family’ beyond the bounds of mainstream imagination, Olive looked introspectively at her own unconventional family model. This process included rifling through collective family archives which captured moments of her family’s life in Mundaring. Integrating these found family archives with intimate portraits, Olive developed a series of images that critique the mainstream idea of family while simultaneously reflecting her own experiences and connections.

“I am connected to Mundaring via deep filial ties, where place nurtures a sense of belonging and identity.” Olive Lipscombe

With the help of this Award, these images formed Olive’s first solo exhibition ‘Au nom de la mère’, which took place at the Perth Centre for Photography in late January this year.

In deciding the 2019 recipient of the Robert Juniper Award for the Arts, the Judges, musician and educator Jonathan Brain, singer Penny Reynolds and photographer Bo Wong, unanimously recommended Olive commenting that her application “…had a solid outcome which is timely for her current career position. Olive is poised to become the new generation of female fine art photographers, of which there are very few – especially in WA… the first solo exhibition of a fine artist can have a profound effect on their development as an artist.”

Not to be thwarted by the unexpected power outage lasting most of the day and temperatures in the high 30’s the Mundaring CWA ladies cooked up a storm of tasty morsels for guests to enjoy, washed down with delicious wines from our friends at Lionmill Winery. Examples of Olive’s photography were enjoyed by all who attended including the Hon Ken Wyatt, Member for Kalamunda Mr Matthew Hughes, Shire of Mundaring President Cr John Day, Chair of the Mundaring Arts Centre Board Jenny Kerr, patron Richard Woldendorp and former Prize sponsor, Trish Juniper.