It's that time of the year again, when one top South African visual art award follows hot on the heels of another. On July 13 Alan Alborough scooped the R35 000 FNB Vita Art Prize
(see story), and now Marco Cianfanelli has won the Absa L'Atelier - picking up R70 000, a return ticket to Paris and the much-coveted residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts. Four runners-up each take home R15 000: they are Natasha Christopher, Benninghof Puren, Alastair McLachlan and James Webb, with Retha Bornmann, Conrad Botes, Senzeni Marasela, Marlaine Tosoni and Doreen Southwood completing the top 10 list. Cianfanelli won for a work (pictured left) titled
Interference, which he describes as "hover[ing] somewhere between drawing, painting, digital art and printmaking", and using razorwire to explore "the emphatic and aggressive demarcation of boundary and property ... and how it points toward issues of isolation and segregation". Congratulations to all the winners.