Live well, die well: art prize celebrates the journey between life and death

Last night in Brisbane, artist Vicki White was named the overall winner of the Live Well Die Well Art Prize, awarded to the best artwork on the theme of palliative care and mortality. Hosted by Palliative Care Australia and supported by residential aged care provider Arcare, the award celebrates creative reflections on end-of-life.

Her work, "Tethered to the Earth", is a photopolymer photogravure etching on paper, detailing the feet of her dying father last year. Speaking as she received the award, White said she knew she had captured a special, peaceful moment on film as she and her family sat with their father. "When I saw the art prize come up, I just felt like it was something that needed to be put out there," she said.

She was one of six winners at the prize (details below).

The CEO of Palliative Care Australia, Camilla Rowland, said the Live Well Die Well Art Prize was designed to engage the community in conversation about end-of-life care and the importance of living well until the end.

“It’s been very moving to see how every artist who has submitted work for the Live Well, Die Well Art Prize has explored themes of mortality, compassion and care. We received over 100 entries, and each artwork has captured the diversity of lived experiences and perspectives.” Rowland said.

“It’s really a way of having a national conversation about living well and death and dying,” she told the Advocate. “The art competition itself is almost a product of how people are expressing their grief and their journey, and it raises conversations in our community that we need, because talking about life and death is still a bit of a taboo subject in our society.

Rowland said there was a need for people to be more comfortable and open about illness and death. “We know that people who have been through the journey are often very keen to talk about it, but people who haven’t been through that journey with someone they love, it’s still a bit of a scary topic at times, and we want to normalise discussions about the fact that everyone dies one day. Everyone is born, everyone dies, and everyone has different journeys,” she said.

“We have almost 190,000 people who die each year in Australia, which equates to around about 400 people a day,” she said. “This should be part of our normal conversation in our community. We talk about sex, we talk about mental health, we really need to be talking about some of these other challenging topics like living well and dying as a natural part of life.”

While cash prizes were awarded to the overall and category winners, Rowland told the Advocate that the competition was more an extension of the essential role art therapy can play in end-of-life care than it was a lucrative opportunity for artists. “It’s not like the Archibald where we’re talking huge money prizes,” she said. “But it’s definitely a contribution towards helping the artists on their journey. A lot of people who enter are not professionals. We often have people who are amateurs, and they’ve expressed themselves and their journey with their loved one through their art.

“Art therapy is, in fact, very important in terms of palliative care and the whole model of palliative care. Art and music therapy is essential to how people express their emotion and their whole journey of their illness.”

Rowland said the judges had been amazed by the quality and diversity of the artworks entered in the competition. “Some people who have entered are well-known artists. Some are amateurs, as I said, and the way they’ve expressed [themselves] through photography or through different mediums is incredible to show what their relationship has often been with that loved one or the reflection of the journey itself. It’s not necessarily about the loved one, but the journey that they’ve been through.”

The 33 finalist artworks are on display in conjunction with the biennial Oceanic Palliative Care Conference (25OPCC) in Brisbane, which runs until this Friday (September 12).

More than 1500 delegates are attending the conference, which brings together people working in specialist palliative care, aged care, disability care and oncology, “anywhere that is a sector that has life-limiting illnesses,” Rowland said.

“Because palliative care is holistic, it looks at the social and emotional and physical wellbeing of people. You really get a range of different workers and carers and consumers come along [to the conference] who look at all those different aspects of spirituality, emotional support, different medical clinical models that work,” she said.

High on the agenda is the fact of Australia’s ageing population and how the country will cope as more and more people need palliative care. Currently, only 38 per cent of Australians can access specialist palliative care, because of funding gaps and geographical challenges. Rowland said the government has not reduced funding but hasn’t increased it either, which means funding is sliding backwards in real terms. This is only going to become a bigger issue as the population ages.

“Between 2022 and 2032, there will be triple the growth in the number of people turning 85,” Rowland said. “And what that means is that we’re going to have not only an older society, but more people with [complex end-of-life care needs], because these people turning 85 will often have more than one diagnosis. Their end-of-life care is going to be way more complex in terms of trying to manage all those symptoms and all the different issues they might have.

“This is a big topic because of the number of ‘blue zone’ countries or strongly ageing countries that are emerging around the world, and how are we going to provide that quality of life care for people who are older? They are important discussions for our health system as well as our community and our politics, and also about the role of older people in our society … how do we value them?”

More information:

Overall Winner: Vicki White (NSW) - 'Tethered To Earth' 2024 Photopolymer Photogravure Etching on Paper/Image Size 29.5cm x 27cm

Winners across other categories:

• First Nations Artist - Leeann Pedersen (WA) - ‘Going Back to Our First Home’
• Emerging Artist - Claire B Cusack (ACT) - ‘Matthew’
• Artist Living with a Disability - Jean Kelly (QLD) - ‘Patches and Memories’
• Primary School Student - Genevieve Sebastian (QLD) - ‘Defying Ageism: Living Life with Flair and Laughter’
• Secondary School Student - Sarah Polkinghorne (NSW) - ‘Letters from Joan’

To see the Live Well Die Well Art Prize finalists, click here