Maritime Festival G+B Exhibition top prize won by Kerrie Argent with artwork made of repurposed aluminium cans

A work by a Great Southern artist made out of repurposed aluminium cans has taken out the top prize in the second annual G+B Exhibition. Kerrie Argent’s piece Ripples was awarded best overall entry in the exhibition, which tasks artists with creating an artwork inspired by the colours green and blue for the gallery showing as part of the Maritime Festival. Ms Argent, a nurse who splits her time between Lake Grace and Kronkup, said she worked on putting the piece together eight hours a day for about two weeks, repurposing metal from countless drink cans she had collected and then painted. She said she was “extremely surprised” to take home the top prize from a pool of 40 other artists, after entering the exhibition for the first time last year. Ms Argent said conforming the colour palette of her artwork with the exhibition’s theme was a challenge as she usually works with reds and yellows. “I don’t work in the colour green and blue very often, it’s very odd colours for me,” she said. “And so it’s always a challenge to do a green and blue work.” She drew inspiration for the piece from the ripples sent out by a stone in a puddle and the significance of water to her in both Kronkup and Lake Grace. “Where we live in Kronkup, we come down over Torbay Hill and I watch the ocean ripple, some days it’s flat some days it’s choppy, and all the different colours glimmering,” Ms Argent said. “But also the fact that where I live in Lake Grace, water is such a premium thing. “Water is so much more valuable and an important part of our world. “We’ve come off four years of drought and so we had no water, you couldn’t water your garden and the garden died, that type of stuff. “Even this year, even though we’ve had what looks like a reasonable amount of rain, it’s only been in two big rainfalls so it’s still dry up here at the moment. “So I guess it’s about the importance of water and loving when we get the puddles.” The exhibition is on display at the Hilton Garden Inn until July 27.