Paul Kim won the traditional section for his cultural-crossover watercolour Flowers and Birds.
Paul Kim won the traditional section for his cultural-crossover watercolour Flowers and Birds.
Hokianga arts tutor Glen Hayward won the $4000 contemporary prize in the BDO Northland Arts Awards, which opened at the Turner Centre in Kerikeri on November 10, for a work called New Tattoo (Veilux)
The choice of winners at the awards has sparked controversy in the past, but judge JohnDaly-Peoples said Hayward's work appealed for a range of technical, social and aesthetic reasons.
It played with ideas about gallery spaces by presenting an aspect of the gallery, the surveillance camera, which was always present. It also tied in to the current debate around surveillance and the tradition of the found object in which the artist took an ordinary object and placed it in a gallery, posing questions about the artist's role and the meaning of art.
The winner in the contemporary art category is Glen Hayward for this surveillance camera carved from kauri.
"There's further delight in this being a handmade object made of kauri, in many ways a pointless task but lovingly produced," Mr Daly-Peoples said.
The traditional prize, also worth $4000, went to Paul Kim of Whangarei for his cultural-crossover painting called Flowers and Birds.
Mr Daly-Peoples said the watercolour, based on traditional Chinese landscape/botanical painting, linked the Asian landscape with the local. It also made cultural links by depicting a pohutukawa shading a chrysanthemum and pukeko mingling with a peacock, kingfisher and tui.
"I also enjoyed the way in which some Asian elements were used such as the high viewpoint looking through clouds and the stylised wave curls. The work reminds me that when European artists first arrived in New Zealand they imposed a cultivated European view of landscape on the rougher New Zealand. In this work we see another immigrant reworking the same landscape."
The youth winner is Sharn Hodgson of Whangarei for her painting "Power In Youth"
The $500 Rona Swallow Youth Award went to Sharn Hodgson for her painting Power in Youth. The 17-year-old lives at Mangapai, near Whangarei, and studies at Tauraroa Area School. Mr Daly-Peoples she had elevated the portrait to that of a deity or saint, with the attention to hair and facial detail giving a real sense of the sitter.
Sixty-four finalists were chosen for the show in a wide variety of media. Artists had to be based in Northland to be eligible.
The only prize still to come is the Law North People's Choice Award, to be announced on the final day of the exhibition. The show closed at Kerikeri yesterday.
