The contrast of the neon orange of traffic cones against a mountainous landscape will help a Stratford student in their studies next year.
Rhiannon Higgs from Taranaki Diocesan School for Girls in Stratford is the winner of the George Mason Visual Arts Scholarship 2019, for her artwork titled Curved Reality 2019. The scholarship is managed by NPDC's Govett-Brewster Art Gallery.
Curved reality, her year 13 photography folio board, was inspired by the way traffic cones stand out in the landscape, she says.
" I noticed the striking contrast of its neon orange colour lined with reflective stripes against the mountainous landscape. My folio board is about discovering the extraordinary within the ordinary – to slightly curve the reality we see. To do this, I abstracted the cone to its most fundamental roots – in form and colour. By blurring the photographs the cone it becomes an extension of the landscape, which is still grounded in structural lines. These abstracted photographs were printed double sided on a piece of card which I then curved into both the shape of a cone and the soft rolling hills. A reality that has been curved by imagination."
It isn't the first time Rhiannon has been inspired by colour.