Wednesday, April 18

more words on the norseweART award

These words were on Creative New Zealands website about the NorseweART award... very nice!

17 Apr 2007
Seraphine Pick wins 2007 Norsewear Art Award
Wellington artist Seraphine Pick has won the 2007 Norsewear Art Award, worth $20,000, for her oil on linen painting, Phantom Limb, which was chosen from 466 entries by a panel of expert judges.

The work sold at Saturday's opening for $30,000. Chair of the judging panel, Sydney art dealer Martin Browne, described Pick's painting as "a rich and accomplished work by an artist working at the peak of her profession today".

Winners of the $4000 merit awards are painters Peata Larkin of Auckland, John McLean of Taranaki, and Wellington artist and jeweller Emily Valentine Bullock.

Pick said her painting reflected her interest in concepts of memory and time - the "real" and "the unreal".

At Saturday's award opening at the Hawke's Bay Exhibition Centre, art critic Hamish Keith said he needed to correct Hastings Mayor Lawrence Yule, who had described the Norsewear Art Award as "a leading contemporary art award".

"The Norsewear is the leading New Zealand contemporary art award," Hamish Keith said.

Martin Browne echoed Hamish Keith's comments at Sunday's gallery floor talk, saying that the Norsewear was "the pre-eminent national award". The quality of the Norsewear had increased so dramatically over the years that many past winners of the show would not even be selected for the exhibition if they were entered today, he said.

The artists in this year's show were "working at the top of their practices", he said.

Perhaps the six-week exhibition period could be extended or the exhibition taken on tour, he suggested.

Hawke's Bay Art Gallery and Museum manager Douglas Lloyd Jenkins, who was also on the judging panel, said he loved the Norsewear.

"I love it. It's erratic, it's kooky, it's eccentric. It's full of passion and strong ideas. It's the one art award in New Zealand that has never been patronising to crafts people or object makers."

The Norsewear Art Award is on at the Hawke's Bay Exhibition Centre in Hastings, daily from 10am to 4.30pm until 27 May.

1 comment:

microphen said...

so there you have it. it's now official.

i quote - The artists in this year's show were "working at the top of their practices"

you are never going to get better than badly focussed and shaky photographs.

time to give up i'd say.