Whanganui artist Prakash Patel was a category winner in the 2018 Sarjeant Gallery Te Whare o Rehua Arts Review and now his work is to be included in a national exhibition.
Patel received the WHMilbank Gallery Merit Award for his work Immigrant and now his 2016 acrylic on canvas Forest & Friends has been selected for a major exhibition and auction at Aratoi Wairarapa Museum of Art and History, in Masterton.
Forest & Friends is one of 70 international, national and regional artworks selected for the exhibition.
Patel's incorporation of emblems and techniques evocative of traditional Indian culture-making, within the modern constraints of the painted canvas, stem from his experiences as an Indian growing up in Whanganui.
Paint provided Patel with a way of expressing a sense of cultural dislocation and the gulf between his Gujarati background and the culture of 1970s New Zealand.