Our main building is closed until December for construction work. Exscite is still open every day! More
Skip to page content
Home / Exhibitions + Events » National Contemporary Art Award » 2009 Trust Waikato National Contemporary Art Award

2009 Trust Waikato National Contemporary Art Award

5 SEPTEMBER 2009 - 24 JANUARY 2010

CONGRATULATIONS TO DANE MITCHELL, THE WINNER OF THE 2009 AWARD.

Collateral (see image below) by Dane Mitchell. 2009 Judge, Charlotte Huddleston gives her judge's talk.

 

19941 19942

 

About the Award

The Trust Waikato National Contemporary Art Award is an opportunity for New Zealand artists to appear in an overview of national artistic practice and feature in a major exhibition within the Waikato Museum. The winner receives $15,000.

Among our national art community this Art Award, established by the Waikato Society of Arts in 2000, is regarded as one of New Zealand’s premiere contemporary art events. It has put Waikato on the map for refusing to shy away from controversy and promoting debate about what is fresh and innovative in art.

The winner of the 2008 Trust Waikato National Contemporary Art Award was Patrick Lundberg with his entry 'Untitled' a found piece of plaster board revealing the history of a piece of wall.

Each year, the Award also gives the opportunity to view New Zealand’s contemporary art scene through the eyes of a respected curator.

THIS YEAR'S JUDGE

The judge for 2009 is Charlotte Huddleston who is currently the Curator of Contemporary Art at Te Papa Tongarewa the Museum of New Zealand.  Huddleston is a well-known curator and essayist. Significant curatorial projects include Mostly Harmless: a performance series and Linked: connectivity and exchange both presented at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery. She has written essays on Ann Shelton, Saskia Leek, Hye Rim Lee and Lee Bul and contributed to several other publications including Art at Te Papa.

The Waikato Museum is proud to be the organiser of an event that records clear moments of New Zealand’s art history in the making. We are also very appreciative of the contribution of our major sponsor Trust Waikato, and of the continuing support from the Waikato Society of Arts.

Don't miss this opportunity to see these artworks at the Waikato Museum.

 

TRUST WAIKATO NATIONAL CONTEMPORARY ART AWARD

 ONLINE CATALOGUE

5 SEPTEMBER 2009- 25 JANUARY 2010

THE GOOD THING ABOUT ART IS… IT’S GOOD TO TRY OUT THIS  KIND OF EXPERIMENT BECAUSE IT DOESN’T MATTER WHAT HAPPENS ,  IT’S NOT DANGEROUS, IT’S NOT LIFE,  IF YOU DON’T LIKE IT YOU CAN SWITCH IT OFF, OR RENT ANOTHER DVD. ART IS SOMETHING WE DELIBERATELY LET OURSELVES ENTER INTO BECAUSE WE KNOW WE CAN TAKE SOME MILD PSYCHIC RISK.

BRIAN ENO, KEYNOTE ADDRESS, LUMINOUS FESTIVAL, SYDNEY OPERA HOUSE JUNE 2009

CONTEMPORARY ART PROMISES ONE THING AND THAT IS PROVOCATION.

ART TALKS TO YOU. 
ART CREATES CONVERSATIONS. 
ART ASKS YOU TO CONVERSE BEFORE YOU LEAVE TO RENT YOUR NEXT DVD.    

 

A WORD FROM THE DIRECTOR

Once again the Trust Waikato National Contemporary Art Award has attracted significant interest from throughout New Zealand. This year 300 entries were received, from which 42 finalists were selected. Our use of new technology to bridge geographical distance and facilitate work across virtual space with our Judge in Wellington has enabled a very efficient and manageable process in true 21st century style. The final result is a spectacular exhibition in the museum’s premier space, reflecting the significance and value attributed to the annual Awards in the museum’s exhibition programme.

We would like to take this opportunity to recognise and acknowledge the magnificent support the Award has received from Trust Waikato over the past 9 years. This has assisted with the establishment of it as one of the major contemporary art awards in the country for both emerging and established artists. Whilst being a beacon for contemporary art development in Hamilton and the Waikato, its brand has also gained significant interest and support nationally. Sponsorship for arts is always a significant investment back into the community, encouraging a vital and creative environment for everyone. This is the last year that the Trust is sponsoring the Award but their generosity has left a strong legacy from which it can continue to grow and become a key feature of the annual arts calendar of New Zealand.

NGÂ MIHI ANÔ
KATE VUSONIWAILALA

A FINAL WORD FROM THE SPONSOR

E TAUTOKO ANA, E ĀWHINA ANA
I TE HIRA TANGATA
O WAIKATO WHĀNUI

SUPPORTING AND ENHANCING THE WAIKATO COMMUNITY

The Trust Waikato National Contemporary Art Award has become one of the Waikato’s premier art events.  It is our privilege to have been the principal sponsor since 2002.

This year signals the end of Trust Waikato’s sponsorship. We wish to acknowledge the Waikato Society of Arts (WSA) for their original vision and subsequent development of the National Contemporary Art Award.  The Award has been further enriched by the involvement of the Waikato Museum who now manages all aspects of this successful competition and exhibition.

Trust Waikato support many artistic events and organisations with a focus on making all forms of art accessible to people of the Waikato. We have valued our time as principal sponsor of the National Contemporary Art Award and will continue to follow its progress keenly.

Our congratulations go to the 2009 finalists, to the Waikato Museum, Waikato Society of Arts and to all those who have worked to make this event a success.

JOHN KILBRIDE (TRUST WAIKATO CHAIR)
BEV GATENBY (CHIEF EXECUTIVE)

A WORD FROM THE JUDGE

The Trust Waikato National Contemporary Art Awards are well known for the diverse range of entrants both in media and in the range and profile of the artists, and this year is no exception.

If there is a common thread between the 2009 finalists it’s a plurality of approach to thinking and making that is most evident. The works reflect a multi-faceted and enquiring interaction with and response to the experience of contemporary life. It is a real pleasure to be faced with such a variety of works that use material and situation to engage thoughtfully and imaginatively.

There are a multitude of ways to view the world and as many ways to represent it. The works that I have responded to are those which are reflexive, responding to or questioning their situation and sometimes challenging ways of being and looking.

CHARLOTTE HUDDLESTON 
2009 

2009 FINALISTS IN THE TRUST WAIKATO NATIONAL CONTEMPORARY ART AWARD

 

WINNER OF THE 2009 TWNCAA

DANE MITCHELL
COLLATERAL
VARIOUS 
PRICE: $5,250

Much of Dane Mitchell’s practice focuses on the mapping of the spaces of the art world and relations within it. By turns geographical, socio-political, archaeological and anthropological, he seeks to uncover and elucidate the ideological forces, the conventions, modes of behaviour, the networks, the pathologies and obsessions, the environments and structures, that construct the architecture of culture.

GARRETT, LOUISE (2005)
PRESENT SURFACE OF TELL: EXHIBITION CATALOGUE

SIMON GLAISTER
BUMPRISE
PAPER
PRICE: $1,000

SUBPRIME / BUMPRISE

  Debt seeks to pre-empt the future, to make of it an impregnable variation of the present, unperturbed by the threat that the future might be otherwise. The securing of this world is accomplished not by military action and walls alone but by instruments of indebtedness that seek to fix the present through the proliferation of borders of a more intimate kind. The risk that the future might be different from the present is, with debt, transformed into a question of the measurable. Difference becomes quantitative and risk, calculable speculation.
 Bumprise is a 3-part work that uses 5 cash loans made to Auckland’s inner city homeless to reframe and manipulate modern financial practices within contexts of urban destitution and contemporary art. It illustrates both the inconsistency of the moral codes that structure our feelings, behaviour and relationships, and the uneven distribution of power that underlies those interactions - be that in the realms of finance, art, charity or any other. 

Bumprise 1 of 9 by Simon Glaister

NICKI WYNNYCHUK
TREE TO SEA CEREMONY
TYPE C DIGITAL PRINT
PRICE: $600

The native tree to sea ceremony is a simple action, one small part of a larger public artwork, commissioned by the Frankston City Council, Melbourne, Australia. 
Consisting of a liminal and transitory custom made kiosk pulled from behind a bike, over a two-week period, a protest stall to nothing in particular takes place… 
In conclusion, the tree to sea ceremony is enacted, where a potted Australian sapling is pushed into the ocean, using a raft made from recycled waste. 
The humble gesture suggests that one day it may create a brand new farcical land.
Nicki Wynnychuk is currently a studio member of Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces and would like to acknowledge their support

Tree to Sea Ceremony by Nikcki Wynnychuk

Tree to Sea Ceremony N Wynnychuk

LEONIE SMITH 
...CAMERA OBSCURA, 2 PIECE KIT, ONE SIZE FITS ALL, (2009)...
PAPIER MACHE, FOUND OBJECTS, HOUSE PAINT
PRICE: $1,500

...camera obscura, 2 piece kit, one size fits all, (2009)...is part of a new series of experimental devices that draw on the tradition of 5th century BC, Chinese philosopher, Mo-Ti who described the camera obscura as a "locked treasure room", whilst also continuing the tradition of George Eastman's ambition, to make the photographic camera as convenient as a pencil.

The streaming, inverted camera obscura image reflected inside its darkened chamber is analogous to the inverted image that occurs on the retina of the human eye before it is processed by the mind. Both are images where their information is in a state of flux and out of reach.

Each piece in the kit can be worn by slipping the plastic appendage between either the back of a shoe or down the back neck of any garment, respectively.

by Leonie Smith

JODI RUTH KEET
HUSBAND AND WIFE (SELF-PORTRAIT AND PORTRAIT)
PHOTOGRAPHIC PRINT
PRICE: $1,500

Identity seems to accumulate. It is fluid and can be affected by those that we hold (or are held) close to us, it develops, changes and mutates through our stages and relationships in life.

Husband and Wife Jodi Ruth Keet

LESLIE FALLS
GIRL TALK
DVD, INK AND GRAPHITE DRAWING
PRICE: $333

Modern culture depends on media for communication: for the dissemination of information and entertainment. But, in a world of media overload and viewer expectation, the unique expressive qualities of the individual may get lost in the prescriptive presentation of information, leaving little room for independent dialogue with newly encountered images.

This work continues my exploration of documenting the ordinary. My intention in “Girl Talk” is to interrogate and situate conventional understandings and expectations of media in the context of modern cultural while also addressing the issue of technical reproduction versus the handmade.

Girl talk Leslie Falls

HELEN CALDER
51 FL.OZ.
ACRYLIC PAINT, STAINLESS STEEL ROD
PRICE: $1,150

This work is part of a continuing experiment based on the inevitable action of gravity on paint and how this might relate to the history of painting as wall-bound object.

51 fl oz Helen Calder

HELEN CALDER
68 FL.OZ.
ACRYLIC PAINT, STAINLESS STEEL ROD
PRICE: $1,150

This work is part of a continuing experiment based on the inevitable action of gravity on paint and how this might relate to the history of painting as wall-bound object.

68 fl oz Helen Calder

RICHARD MCILROY
KITE
TIMBER, HARDBOARD, WATERCOLOUR PAINT, PVA
PRICE: $1,667

This work is the result of thinking about summer weather, cloudless skies and having something to remind me of these conditions during the winter months; suggesting lightness and optimism.

RUTH CLELAND
TRAVELATOR
GRAPHITE ON PAPER
PRICE: $3,000

All the available variety and difference of late capitalism is displayed beneath dome and atrium, as fountains and fig trees, marble and glass, elevators and escalators, respectively contain, decorate and facilitate the endlessly effortless movement between nature and culture, heaven and hell. Shopping. Shopping.
Roger Silverstone, Visions of Suburbia, Routledge, London, NY, 1997, p.8.

Travelator Ruth Cleland

REBECCA ANN HOBBS
AH-ROUND
HD DIGITAL VIDEO
PRICE: $25,000

Constructed spaces inside constructed spaces whilst thinking about faraway places. (Inside, inside, out.)

Ah Round Rebecca Ann Hobbs

BRYDEE ROOD
DOWN TO EARTH
MIXED MEDIA INSTALLATION
PRICE: $3,333

Down to Earth is the final work of My Material World Series: It includes the complete digital portrait archive of 111 slides featuring three chapters of individual and group portraits recorded during three 'MMWS' installations 2008 - 2009 (Auckland NZ / Miami USA / Culiacan Mexico). In an active mimetic play the viewers in these portraits were captured in a series of stills as they became physically involved within the changing plastic habitat of successive installations. This is the first time the finished digital portrait archive has been compiled for exhibition. The Down to Earth installation is created using a selection of disposable things; rubbish bags and common surfaces mingling with the intricate techniques of ‘Papel Picado’ pre-figured with delicate musings of native bird-life and Japanese squid patterns cutting faces into our material waste and revealing an arrival of attention towards the complex human situation in a changing world.

Down to Earth Brydee Rood

JAMES ROBINSON
THRESHOLD
MIXED-MEDIA PAINTING AND ASSEMBLAGE ON CANVAS AND BOARD
PRICE: $25,000

Hyper narrative action process painting assemblage.
that i made ...de constructing and reforming media - saturating 
information...tapping into unconscious levels of my genre in painting.

Both personal honest didactic modalities form organic connections ideologically (real trinkets from my life) a social global totemic painting - evocation of 
faith and purpose amidst chaos in human society and necessary 
transformational life journey to survive ourselves. .and cultivates 
consciousness to raise self and society.

Threshold can be seen as a totem towards a gathering point on a 
information age collective level...in a quantum non-linear sense and a 
mysterious spiritual sense internally that has a universal appeal.

Threshold James Robinson

JANET MCGIFFORD
TAJ MAHAL
LAMBDA PHOTOGRAPHIC PRINT
PRICE: $1,417

My current body of work seeks to examine the complex relationship photography plays in determining the nature of the tourist experience through the collective visualisation of the tourist gaze.

I am interested in how travel photography can play a part in directing an act of engagement between tourist and site. The inherent relationships between representation, authentication, standardisation and documentation are explored. These elements bring together ideas of the archival and the sublime through the discovery and engagement of popular travel sites such as the Taj Mahal.

I have employed the use of digital photographic processes and the manipulation of travel photography of tourist destinations sourced from the Internet. The photographs are large scale lambda prints(A0) and are printed on metallic paper.

Taj Mahal Janet McGifford

CLINTON WATKINS
AVALANCHE
SINGLE CHANNEL 4:3 VIDEO LOOP, STEREO SOUND ON DVD
PRICE: $5,833

Avalanche is an infinite video loop that encapsulates the sublime magnitude, awe and beauty of a single white wall of ice and snow enveloping everything in its path. 
The accompanying sound-track composed of filtered white noise, low frequency sine wave pulses and extended harmonic tones is synchronized to each loop. 
The work itself is an exploration of viewer/listener experience where the immersive repetition of imagery and sound seeks to abstract and re-contextualize the naturally occurring phenomena.

still from Avalanche Clinton Watkins

KIRSTY LILLICO
STUDY 5
LAMBDA PHOTOGRAPHIC PRINT
PRICE: $3,000

This work aims to extend the conventions of dress and its functionality, in order to examine a human dilemma between the desire to protect a state of interiority and the need to perform one’s identity to the exterior.

I have used digital photography to document a series of toiles; hand-made calico garments used in the process of clothing design. These garments are modeled for the camera by a subject whose identity is withheld through the concealing nature of the garments, and by gesture.

The formal construction of the photograph – lighting, composition, setting - suggests the psychological and social function for the garments’ use and manufacture, and has been informed by the work of 17th century Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer.

This work seeks to create an original engagement with clothing as an agent of protection through the interaction between classical painting references and the contemporary context for the work.

Study 5 Kirsty Lillico

GARY PETERS
LOOKOUT
ACRYLIC ON CANVAS
PRICE: $450

Recently I re-discovered the text based adventure games I played as a kid. Their pithy descriptions of other worlds would enthral me for hours - often way past my bedtime. Using a simple syntax – “Go West”, “Get Bottle”, “Open Door” – I’d explore unknown places, pick up objects, solve puzzles all to find the hidden treasure or save the Princess. I loved it!

Back then I was unaware of the nature of quest, mythology or psychological development of the self. I was just a kid playing games on our VIC20! When the next generation of games arrived with pictures it just wasn’t the same – which of course, was the point…

Now, in this digital high-definition, always-on, always-connected, non-stop 24/7 culture, perhaps this work I’m making – an odyssey in pictures rather than words – has something of those more innocent times and their late night, blurry eyed explorations.


 

Gary Peters

STAFFORD ALLPRESS
KEEP DOOR SHUT
HOUSE PAINT, WIRE, MDF
PRICE: $1,100

A lifelong interest in miniatures along with a background in prop making and set design work has led me into sculpture; in particular, miniature scale sculpture.

With a meticulous treatment of surface and careful construction and placement of mundane objects I have constructed a series of familiar scenes in 1:20 scale.

'Keep door shut' is a peculiarly personal sculpture designed to draw the viewer into an intimate, concentrated world which only reveals its punchline under close scrutiny.

Keep Door Shut Stafford Allpress

JUSTINE WALKER
UNTITLED (PERFORMANCE #8)
PAPER, PENCIL, STICKERS
PRICE: $500

The grid is carefully measured out; the sheet of stickers has been separated into individuals, placed in a hat to be drawn from at random, and stuck into the next available position of the grid. Will it be finished when the grid is full or when the stickers run out? 
When as an individual have you delivered enough? Why do you keep performing?

Untitled performance no. 8 Justine Walker

BERNIE HARFLEET
IN THE EYE OF THE BEHOLDER
PHOTOGRAPHIC PRINT 1/1
PRICE: $3,667 

This work explores the place of the viewer with in art and in society.
As each new person views an artwork, they bring their own thoughts, feelings and experiences to the work. This may bring their interpretation close to the artist’s intent or give the work an altogether new meaning. In this way the work remains in a state of constant change.
In society, the viewer’s response to others based simply on what they see rather than what they know can result in misunderstanding, glorification, and in some cases outright bigotry.

In the eye of the beholder Bernie Harfleet

CATH WATSON
TOPSY
KILN-CAST, LEAD CRYSTAL GLASS LOST WAX TECHNIQUE
PRICE: $1,500

This work draws on my interest in the weather which I have been exploring in my art practice. The daily patterns and changing forms that the weather creates, what we see and feel about us, and how this relates to the picture on the television screen or the lines on the page in the newspaper. 
Lines and symbols, are they really understood?

The chaos of the weather sculpted down;
reduced beyond its essence,
an abstract thought,
the artificial candy forms of a 3D cartogram;
two fronts: one cold, one warm; colliding, they teeter - which way will they go?

Topsy Cath Watson

JILL SORENSON
HORSE
PINE, COLOURED PENCILS, MODELLING CLAY, MAGAZINE CLIPPINGS, GRAPHITE
PRICE: $5,000

The right hand is our most proudly human attribute, controlled, forward looking and righteous. It is most skilled in the cultural graces of the world. The left hand, however, is left largely to it own devices and it remains untrained like an over-looked younger sibling. Consequently it grows up wild and unrestrained with no responsibility toward accuracy or good behaviour. Unlike its civilized sister, it frolics with its shadowy animal roots and gazes with delight at our collective underbelly.
This work is part of an ongoing project investigating the artefacts of the left hand and the complex relationship between the human and the animal.

Horse Jill Sorenson

MATT ELLWOOD
FROM A PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN A COUPLE OF YEARS
CHARCOAL PASTEL ON PAPER
PRICE: $4,000

After completing their final year at Rotorua Girls High School together, Masako Yamamoto and Kirby Jo Goldbert came up to Auckland to attend Elam and Whitecliffe art schools, respectively. Both successfully graduated in 2008.

Kirby Jo is now at teachers college back in Rotorua, whilst Masako has remained in Auckland and works pretty much full-time at Fatima’s on Ponsonby Road.

from a photograph taken a couple of years ago Matt Ellwood

VIRGINIA WOODS-JACK 
AN UNTITLED EMPTY PORTRAIT
VIDEO INSTALLATION
PRICE: $3,333

The face is a site for looking, a site for contemplation. The photographic portrait is customarily a singular record of the face. What becomes of the time though, the time of the experience within which the image was created? This work is concerned with regaining this lost time. The Empty Portrait puts forward a new notion of the portrait blurring the boundary between the still photograph and the cinematic, challenging the traditional relationship between photography and temporality. Expanding the temporal boundaries allows us to examine and consider the photograph through an approach more affiliated with the moving image. The “unfreezing” of the image aims to create or recreate a place where any tangible relationship to time is lost, the future or the past of the experience are immaterial, it is rather the role of the constant “becoming” of the piece to ask the viewer to look and contemplate further.

an untitled empty portrait Virginia Woods-Jack

SHELLEY NORTON
I LIKE OLYMPIA IN PLASTIC
PLASTIC SHOPPING BAGS AND ENTOMOLOGY PINS
PRICE: $8,333

This work arose from a response to Manet's Olympia. I was fascinated by the idea of an Olympia constructed from wrappings, the shed and discarded plastic carrier bags of today's desired objects and consumables. For me this conversed with how the painting's dialogue has become both smothered and heightened by today's conspicuous consumption.

...slipped bow frames emptied gaze
enamel insect pinned object and shadow
viewer flesh the screen
swollen desire stitched
plastic husk...

A tornado of black plastic speaks to ideas once swelteringly hot (Olympia's confronting gaze), now reduced to an outline, yet the repression is present today, but emerges with different triggers and taboos. Many in today's society appear to live in the well-polished consumeristic external of the desired object, but when the buried self is touched, it seems to erupt as if from a raw untouched place, manifesting in a variety of intense and convoluted representations.

I like Olympia in plastic

MELIORS SIMMS
YOU ARE AN AGENT OF CHANGE
TEXTILE
PRICE: $8,333

Polyp by polyp, stitch by stitch and choice by choice, whether conscious or not, we all create the world in which we will live and die. 
The slow, accretive nature of my artistic practice is an analogy for both the natural world and human society. The incremental processes of stitching mimic, and represent, the construction of a reef by millions of tiny coral polyps. These ‘domestic arts’ also signify apparently unrelated individual human choices regarding food, housing, transport and energy; and their cumulative environmental impact.
Alive or dead, coral reefs are teeming with stories about the nature of interdependence, sustainability, resilience, time and hyperbolic mathematics. Juxtaposing a shelf reef of crocheted live coral with an embroidered atoll of dead coral, 'You are an agent of change' embodies both my fears and hopes at this turning point on the brink of coral’s sixth global extinction since life began on Earth.

you are an agent of change Meliors Simms

MARCUS WILLIAMS AND SUSAN JOWSEY
THAMES MERCY
PHOTOGRAPH
PRICE: $3,333

F4 is an artists’ collective made up of the members of a family. Exploiting the narrative potential of photography they explore relationships within the family with reference to the NZ landscapes and histories which surround them.

Thames Mercy S Jowsey and M Williams

IMOGEN KERR
JACOB (TOILET)
OIL ON MDF
PRICE: $1,800

Contemporary painting retains from its Modernist and Conceptualist background the belief that every artist’s work should stake out a position – that a painting is not only a painting but also the representation of an idea about painting. That is one reason there is so little contradiction now between abstract and representational painting: In both cases, the painting is there not to represent the image; the image exists in order to represent the painting (that is, the painting’s idea of painting).

Barry Schwabsky

Jacob Toilet by Imogen Kerr

AKIKO DIEGEL
UP WHERE WE BELONG
PHOTOGRAPH
PRICE: $2,000

The era of post-post modernism, new communication technologies and the outburst of consumption and trading has accelerated the production and circulation of tropes of otherness. Contemporary life may be considered under rubrics including hybridity, multiculturalism, collaboration, and contemporary translation of difference. Interpretations of the otherness developed under these considerations have not necessarily been discarded; rather they have been re-translated and re-recognised.

Up where we belong Akiko Diegel

DEBORAH CROWE
KIBBLE PALACE, SMALL WORLD II
C-TYPE PHOTOGRAPHIC PRINT ON ALUMINIUM
PRICE: $1,000

Little did I know (25 years ago) that the place I felt at home was the Australasian section of Glasgow Botanic Gardens.

My recent practice involves an interest in creating imaginary worlds; revisiting places, buildings and moments that have informed and cultivated a preoccupation with architectural structures and perceptions of spatial experience.

Kibble Palace small world II Deborah Crowe

CATHERINE DAY
ZEPHYR (2008)
VIDEO
  PRICE: $750

A gentle breeze animates and breathes life into four strips of plastic suspended on a clothes line. Their movement is not uniform as one would expect, but each moves individually, together creating a graceful dance-like sequence. The plastic, an industrial waste product, has become a common sight in recent years, often discarded along fence lines or in yards on farms in rural New Zealand. It comes from the large green bales of wrapped grass that is fed out to cattle during the winter months and will take 200 years to decompose. The video highlights this ugly material, transforming it into an object of beauty, aestheticizing it, elevating it to the status of ‘art work’. The work of New Zealand artist Rosalie Gascoigne is a key influence – her use of discarded waste materials, and her interest in depicting air in works such as Plein Air (1994).

Zephyr by Catherine Day

ELLEN SMITH
CLEARING III
PIGMENT INKS ON ACID-FREE COTTON RAG
PRICE:$3,000

Clearing
I made huts in the pine trees as a child. I collected the cones for our fireplace and hung decorations from the xmas-smelling branches.

I learned to hate the pine tree as I grew up. Like possums - a symbol of our colonial invasion and monocultural expansionism.

Driving through forestry blocks, walking with my kids through the pines, dismissal isn’t so easy. I remember anxious old-world stories of lost and enchanted children. I recognise the destruction in early photos of cleared land. I am warmed by the smell of Christmas.

a clearing… a world we haven’t yet learned to read, where meaning still seems
 to be gathering itself, where verticality is a sign of defiance.

‘A Clearing’ R Meeks Nazareli Press, Tucson, 2008

clearing III Ellen Smith

VIVIAN WARD 
INTERSECTING TIME
DIGITAL PHOTOMONTAGE
PRICE: $3,500

This is one in a series of photomontage works, which, in the creation of the composite image from its disparate parts, looks also to maintain a sense of photographic cohesion and verisimilitude. Pattern (both natural and man made) and the overlaying and imposition of pattern on a naturally ordered system, repetition and the creation of narrative are elements in this particular work which uses the NZ bush as both its essential image and as its starting point. The work seeks to examine points of conjunction and intersect in New Zealand’s past that were also points for different possible, but not necessarily inevitable, departures and outcomes.

Intersecting time Vivian Ward

DAVID BOYCE
SHORT STORIES: WE DANCED AFTER YOU TOLD ME YOU LOVED ME, AND THEN WE TOLD STORIES
SILVER GELATINE BLACK AND WHITE PHOTOGRAPHIC PRINT
PRICE: $1,500

I have several obsessions that I use to make art from. An ongoing one is my fascination with language and how it relates to identity. The language of language, if you can excuse the tortuous expression, also attracts my attention. Language can be described as beautiful, ugly, angry, aggressive, muscular, soft, pretty, the same words that are used to describe objects, artworks and people.

We are all story-tellers; we divulge much about ourselves in the way we tell our stories, a glimpse of who we really are. I reveal myself here, but keep the truth hidden in the curves and angles of my story. I hope, when you read this story of love, you understand what transpires.

We danced... David Boyce

DEBORAH ERUETI
UNTITLED
PHOTOGRAPH
PRICE: $2,000

My work consists of photographs of three dimensional paintings. The subject of the work is found objects, (such as glass and plastic bottles), the surrounding environment, and paint itself. The painterly marks are abstract and ‘found colour’ is sourced by photographically sampling the environment and everyday objects.

I am interested in the formal aspects of painting. Traditional supports in painting are by nature flat and opaque. The transparent, three-dimensional surfaces on which I paint allow the opportunity to see through the support and ‘bend’ it, thus rendering both sides of the paint visible simultaneously. This provides the opportunity of looking through the paint rather than at it. It reveals paint as a two-sided surface, of which the viewer traditionally has only seen one side. I also employ the texture of the glass to make depictions of painterly marks without the use of any paint at all.

Untitled Deborah Erueti

DEBORAH ERUETI
UNTITLED
PHOTOGRAPH
PRICE: $2,000

My work consists of photographs of three dimensional paintings. The subject of the work is found objects, (such as glass and plastic bottles), the surrounding environment, and paint itself. The painterly marks are abstract and ‘found colour’ is sourced by photographically sampling the environment and everyday objects.

I am interested in the formal aspects of painting. Traditional supports in painting are by nature flat and opaque. The transparent, three-dimensional surfaces on which I paint allow the opportunity to see through the support and ‘bend’ it, thus rendering both sides of the paint visible simultaneously. This provides the opportunity of looking through the paint rather than at it. It reveals paint as a two-sided surface, of which the viewer traditionally has only seen one side. I also employ the texture of the glass to make depictions of painterly marks without the use of any paint at all.

Untitled Deborah Erueti

MIRANDA PARKES
FLAPPING GANNET, MURIWAI 2009, 
DVD, 1; 14S LOOPING
PRICE: $167

This gannet is an adolescent belonging to the colony at Muriwai beach. On its maiden flight it will travel all the way to Australia and only return ten years later to mate and breed at the very same rock. The work captures the point where the bird is learning the logistics of flight, but with feet still firmly planted. Its wings respond to the touch of the wind and it looks up into the sky when the sun comes out. The DVD traps the gannet in an infinite loop of expectation. It is one of an ongoing series of short, single take DVDs that I consider to be ‘thick’ photographs.

Flapping Gannet Miranda Parkes

DAVID ROPER
WAIKATO WATERCOLOURS
DIGITAL PHOTOMONTAGE
PRICE: $1,750

This photo-montage represents a page from the Munsell Book of Colour – a colour classification system often used in scientific studies. The colours of rivers and lakes in the Waikato, Bay of Plenty, and central North Island are represented on a geographic matrix with the variations in colour reflecting their different characteristics and quality. The contrasting colours result from differences in the water’s source and fate.

The work is a representation of our natural environment but also a statement about our use and abuse of the country’s water resources.

Waikato water colours David Roper

RICHARD MALOY
SCULPTURES 1-6 
SIX PHOTOGRAPHS
PRICE: $5,000

In each of the six self-portraits I am clad in metal foil, striking and capturing an odd type of sculptural pose, almost getting it right but never quite.

Sculptures 1-6 one of 6 photographs Richard Maloy

LISA BENSON
STILL
ANTIQUE BLACK AND WHITE PHOTOGRAPHIC PAPER, GATHERED LIGHT FROM ARTIST’S STUDIO, AND WAIKATO MUSEUM DURING THE EXHIBITION
PRICE: $2,300

Lisa Benson self-portraits: multiple, identical copies of your face on unfixed photographic paper. One image, yet each version is different – on different paper stock, with different tinges and blemishes, developing at a different pace as the light hits it. Unfixed photographs of you, breathing out, gradually expiring. Your face reminds me of Julia Margaret Cameron’s Iago (1867), with his long hair, downcast eyes and introspective air. Although Cameron, like you, revealed photography to be a trickster, she also preserved her subject’s timeless beauty. You are, perhaps, more brave, for your portraits do not preserve you. Instead, this room full of slowly darkening Lisa Bensons appears as a performance of your mortality, a dance of little deaths, a stark admission of vulnerability and a plea to every visitor in the gallery to stay with you as you fade. To stay with you even when you are finally, utterly still.  

Cassandra Barnett

Still - detail by Lisa Benson

AMIT CHARAN
ALUMINIUM, MIRROR, GLASS SHEET
PAINTING
PRICE: $1,133

The work I am submitting is a painted image of a mirror mounted on a wall. The depicted mirror does not reflect back a specific figurative image, instead illustrates an abstract impression of light hitting the “reflexive” surface. By dissolving the focal point – what would be the specific reflected image in the mirror becomes a work highlighting the more subtle surface quality of the painted plane. The uncanny mimicry of the mirror (painting as mirror) suggests the power of painting as a medium to invent an imaginary time and space.

Amit Charan aluminium mirror glass sheet

ASH KILMARTIN
MAKING PROGRESS: CLARITY OF VISION PARTS 4-6
PINE, LEATHER, BRASS
PRICE: $1,250

Terrence,

The Habitat catalogues still lie around. Judging by covers, your aims were clear: good design for everyone. You tried to reach them all, urban or rural, cash or credit.

The 1973 section on chairs reads like an essay in early-twentieth-century design history. Critics applauded you for bringing Modernism to the masses. Putting high-quality design into high-volume production, you allowed everyone the same choice: Merging ‘culture’ with ‘industry’. But speaking from the morning after the century before, the choice between a ‘folk’- chair and a ‘Bauhaus’-chair doesn’t feel much like a choice at all.

Things are only worth keeping as long as they’re functioning. Including function as a dominant value or old mail-order catalogues.

Making progress clarity of vision Ash Kilmartin

MAREE WILSON
ORGANIC WOOD PAINTING
GESSO, AUTOMOTIVE PAINT ON MDF
PRICE: $4,167

This work is part of a continuing project that questions when a painting becomes a sculpture. 
It explores the possibilities of introducing real space into a painterly space, so the gesture of the holes is about process and manufacture; the literal work of art, drilled into the smooth polished paint layers disrupting and eating away the pristine painted surface, much like a virus infecting our ideas of a two -dimensional reality.

organic wood painting Maree Wilson

 

 

ARTWORK SALES

All works are for sale and can be made through the Waikato Society of Arts (WSA). Please note that all prices are set by the artist.

Payment may be made by cash, cheque, Visa or MasterCard. A WSA representative will be available during the evening of the awards opening to assist with sales enquiries and arrangements.

At all other times, enquiries should be made directly to the WSA, Level 1, Artspost building, 120 Victoria Street, Hamilton. (next door to the Waikato Museum).

 

 

 

 

AWARD SPONSORED BY

15099

SUPPORTED BY

15097  15100  17881