Olsen Irwin would like to congratulate Fiona McMonagle on winning the 2015 National Self-Portrait Prize for her work 'One hundred days at 7pm' 2015. The work is a single-channel video animation lasting 00:00:16, looped. The work is comprised of on hundred individual portraits painted at 7pm and is brought to life through animation. [vimeo]https://vimeo.com/145586464[/vimeo] One hundred days at 7pm 2015 single-channel video animation 00:00:16, looped Animator and videographer: Declan McMonagle Courtesy of the artist; Heiser Gallery, Brisbane; and Olsen Irwin, Sydney. Winner of the National Self-Portrait Prize 2015 'I wanted to translate these ideas about time and change into this work. So, I painted one self portrait every day at 7.00 pm for 100 days. The process itself turned out to be an intrinsic part of the work. The ritual of painting one self portrait at the same time every day was an exercise in self discipline and a test of my painting skills. I had to be in the studio every day at 7.00 pm to paint my self portrait. No excuses. Working with video but being a painter, I wanted the artwork to have a fluidity about it. As a medium, watercolour lends itself very nicely to the moving image. ?The challenge was to keep the self portraits as consistent as possible. I set some rules in place: I worked with a restricted palette, used a restricted number of brushes, and was not allowed to view the previous portrait when making the next. The result: each painting is slightly different from the next ? some good, some not so good. Because of these differences in the paintings and the fluid nature of watercolour, the finished work takes on a flickering effect, reminiscent of early film making. Having pasted the paintings together, the end result is a moving, blinking self portrait that the viewer can interact with on a whole new level.'