Tauranga Art Gallery announces 2019 winner of Rydal Art Prize

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Tauranga Art Gallery Toi Tauranga, in partnership with Seeds Trust, has announced the winner of the inaugural Rydal Art Prize for 2019.

Three of New Zealand's leading public art gallery curators were invited as judges.

The winning exhibition was tilted Solid Gold by Christina Pataialii and was shown at Te Tuhi, Auckland last year.

Director of Tauranga Art Gallery Alice Hutchison will present Pataialii with the award at a celebratory evening on June 8 and working together to curate Pataialii's 2020 exhibition.

The Rydal Art Prize is New Zealand's newest art award with a specific focus on a contribution to contemporary painting.

This bi-annual prize awards an artist $20,000 for a work or body of work deemed to be outstanding in the field of painting over the prior two-year period.

As a non-acquisitive prize it celebrates the role that painting continues to play within the now varied field of artistic practice in Aotearoa New Zealand.

A diversity of established and emerging artists were short-listed by the judges to determine a unanimous winner considering painting in its expanded form.

Recognising the contribution to current painting practice the artist is also invited to present a new solo exhibition at Tauranga Art Gallery in 2020.

It has provided the opportunity for the jury and audiences to look closely at where experimentation, strength and difference might lie in one of the oldest artistic mediums.