By Ruby Eames
The results are in, and budding young artists from Lyndhurst Secondary College have been crowned the winners of a local annual art competition.
The Grow Your Ideas art competition encourages students aged twelve to eighteen attending Lyndhurst Secondary College to express themselves through visual art while also increasing the exchange of art and culture in the community. The competition is run by Lynbrook Village Shopping Centre.
The students submitted artwork relating to the competition theme of culture, peace and unity. Their paintings and drawings were displayed in the shopping centre for customers to view and vote for their favourite piece.
“We just wanted to engage with the local community,” said Lynbrook Village’s marketing manager, Melanie Brown.
“We wanted to use our space and we wanted to engage with a creative culture. We identified that Lyndhurst Secondary College was one of the closest high schools to us and needed some support, so that’s why we decided to initiate this art competition.”
On Tuesday 26 June, students received the results of the competition at a sponsored lunch at local restaurant, Suburban Burger. Winner Rifat was “pretty surprised” that he won the competition with his painting inspired by “the current state of the world and climate change.”
“I wanted to do something to represent what humans are doing to the world,” he said when asked about how his piece related to the competition’s theme.
The competition also awarded two students encouragement awards and one with a people’s choice award for the artwork that received the most votes when on display for public viewing.
Dakota, who won the people’s choice award, was shocked when the results were announced.
“Are you sure this isn’t a dream?” she joked.
Dakota’s piece featured original characters created by her and encouraged acceptance and unity.
Meanwhile Ava, recipient of one of the encouragement awards, cast a critical eye over her piece.
“I look at it and can see a lot of mistakes, but I think everyone does that,” she said when asked how she felt about her piece, “I must have done something right to get this far.”
The winning students were individually awarded Coles Group and Myer gift vouchers as prizes. The competition also provided an additional array of art supplies estimated to value $1,000 for Lyndhurst Secondary College’s art classes.
“I’m blown away, to tell you the truth,” said Anthony Brennan, Lyndhurst Secondary College’s acting assistant principal when asked how proud he was of the students, “I was blown away in terms of how talented they are and what they were able to achieve.”
Ms Brown confirmed that Lynbrook Village intends to run the Grow Your Ideas competition for a fourth time next year and possibly expand it.
“[We] could perhaps do some sort of an auction. Maybe we could have the top five pieces of art produced as posters and sold for charity or something like that,” she said.
