Congratulations to Oscar Wilson, Renato Rovacchi, Fox Stapleton and Isaiah Close-Brown for their collaborative submission in the annual Clancy Religious Prize celebrating creativity and spirituality. The students worked tirelessly during their lunch breaks and after school to create their reflection of the school’s unique history in Catholic Education to enter into the competition. Thank you to Visual Arts teacher Ms Turnbull for her support and creative guidance of these students over the past few months.
Waverley College ‘Clancy Prize Entry’ – contributing artists: Oscar Wilson, Fox Stapleton, Renato Rovacchi, Isaiah Close-Brown
Exhibition Opening
The exhibition opening is at 6pm Friday 21 May, 2021 at the McGlade Gallery (Australian Catholic University) Strathfield campus, and will be on show until Sunday 30 May. Winners of the prize will be announced on opening night.
Bookings for the gallery exhibition opening can be made through:
Diane Merrilees at ACU | 9701 4140 | E: diane.merilees@acu.edu.au
The theme for 2021 explores celebrating 200 years of Catholic education in Australia.
Collaborative artist statement:
The triptych is a collaboration reflecting Waverley College in how we know it, as a community. This triptych reflects our 117+ years of unique history of Catholic Education in the Eastern Suburbs. Each panel represents our school’s foundations and how this instills spirituality within its students. Furthermore, we also wanted to represent the longer history of the suburb of Waverley and the land our school sits upon. In collaboration with Year 11 student Isaiah Close-Brown, symbols are included that represent our school and the land of Waverley; as we believe this is much a part of our school as anything else, and to show the inclusions and diversity that we as Waverley students pride ourselves on.
Panel 1: Represents how Blessed Edmund Rice’s mission of Catholic Education has instilled in us as students to become a more whole person, with a mission to graduate from Waverley as a more rounded human being and to create a positive difference locally and globally.
Panel 2: Reflects Blessed Edmund Rice’s tradition instilled with Br. Brian Murphy (Teacher, Sports Master, Queens Park Groundskeeper). Br. Murphy started his career at Waverley in 1973, and he made an impact with students, the school’s sport and the spiritual guidance of the College. Now retired from teaching, Br. Murphy keeps strong ties with the Waverley College community, both on and off the sporting fields. Before school he can often be found greeting the students by name and with a handshake as they arrive. At the conclusion of his interview at Queens Park, Murphy, still a man of action, excused himself to dash across to the far field to assist with training.
Panel 3: Represents the key foundation of Waverley College, Blessed Edmund Rice. Edmund Rice was a man of action, offering his home to those that couldn’t afford education, and he enabled those people to live with hope in the future. Under Edmund Rice Education Australia, we at Waverley still strive to live out Edmund Rice’s mission with liberating education, within an inclusive community committed to justice and solidarity.
Good luck to these students and well done on their creative reflection of our College as we celebrate the bicentenary of Catholic education in Australia.
Ms Natalie Oates
Head of Visual Arts
E: noates@waverley.nsw.edu.au
