Concrete Forest, an artwork comprising 36 concrete human busts each incised with a delicate foliage design created by Beijing born artist Ah Xian, has won the $50,000 Clemenger 2009 Art Award.

This highly prestigious exhibition and prize was established by Joan and Peter Clemenger in 1991 through a generous gift to the National Gallery of Victoria.  Presented as a series of triennials, this is the sixth and final award in the series.

The winning artist, Ah Xian, was born in Beijing, China, in 1960 and arrived in Australia along with his brother Liu Xiao Xian in 1990 shortly after the trauma of Tiananmen Square.  His artistic practice has always focussed on a personal exploration of cultural and spiritual identity that he translates through the creation and decoration of sculptural busts and human forms.  Ah Xian uses millenia-old Chinese art materials and techniques; jade, porcelain, lacquerware, cloisonne and bronze to form the base of his symbolically decorated works of art that address the artistic language and values of both East and West.

In the words of the artist "Twenty years after the Cultural Revolution and after China has opened its door to the world, we as artists with a Chinese background, should have learned and been sufficiently influenced by Western philosophy, art and culture as a whole to attain a level of confidence and capability to tell a story about ourselves using our own language.  I feel that we should not need to tell stories about the Chinese situation only through the foreign languages that we have just learnt."

Concrete Forest marks a dramatic shift in materials for Ah Xian.  His use of concrete to cast the busts rather than more traditional material, suggests that he has taken on the substance of the modern city, the substance that forms the body of the buildings and roads of contemporary life.  On each bust he delicately incises foliage of different plant species and according to Alex Baker, Senior Curator of Contemporary Art at the NGV "the artwork is a response to environmental degradation, the encroachment of urban development on the landscape and the inherent fragility of life."

The other artists exhibiting in the Clemenger Contemporary Art Award Exhibition are Peter Atkins, Vivienne Binns, Stephen Bush, Destiny Deacon, Domenico de Clario, Janenne Eaton, Julie Gough, Guan Wei, Louise Hearman, Janet Laurence, Trevor Nickolls, Dennis Nona, Scott Reford and Julie Rrap.

The exhibition opened today and continues until 7th February 2010 at the NGV, Federation Square.