Blake Prize 2012

Fabian Astore - The Threshold

In January, Sydney artist Fabian Astore was out sightseeing in Istanbul when the cold weather became too much. He popped inside the nearby Suleiman mosque. Prayers had just begun, and Astore took a seat at the back of the room.

The sounds were striking: he turned on his video camera and began recording the scene in front of him. "Quite coincidentally,'' he says, "a little girl started running through this vast, beautiful space.''

"Here was a young girl expressing her innocence and youthfulness, and yet she would get to a point in the threshold of her life where she would no longer be allowed in that space,'' he says.

The Threshold from Fabian Astore on Vimeo.

Astore's work was yesterday named the joint winner of the Blake Prize for religious art. He shared the prize with Eveline Kotai, from Fremantle, who entered a triptych called Writing on Air - Mantra.