Medieval map wins the Wallace Awards

The 23rd Annual Wallace Art Awards
Pah Homestead, TSB Bank Wallace Arts Centre
September 2-November 9

Salon des Refusés
September 2-19 October 19 

The annual Wallace Art Awards were opened this week by Auckland mayor Len Brown at the Pah Homestead, TSB Bank Wallace Arts Centre, with the Paramount Award winner going to Roger Mortimer for his work Otago Harbour.

He receives a six-month residency at the International Studio and Curatorial Program in New York.

The artist says of the work, “The coastline around Otago Harbour has been illustrated with images originating from a 14th century manuscript of Dante's Divine Comedy. I have been populating the New Zealand coastline with flotsam and jetsam for a number of years. I seem to be drawn to old documents, maps and manuscripts. The opportunity to visit libraries and museums in Europe or the US would be of interest to me.”

One of the judges Linda Tyler, commenting on the winning work says it is “medieval in appearance, yet utterly contemporary in its intent.”

This year the Wallace Arts Trust received 524 entries of which 90 have been selected as finalists. From the finalists 49 have been chosen for the Award Winners & Travelling Finalists exhibition and the balance is represented in the Salon des Refusés. The finalists receive prizes and awards amounting to over $195,000. The long-running awards are one of the few opportunities to see a cross section of art from around the country featuring senior practitioners along with newly emerging artists.

As Sir James Wallace noted, “the Exhibitions of Winners and Finalists undoubtedly encompass an exciting and challenging diverse range of works from many of New Zealand’s leading artists.”

Ruth Watson received the Fulbright-Wallace Arts Trust Award for her work Telluric Insurgencies I, which entitles her to a three-month residency at the Headlands Center for the Arts in San Francisco, USA.

Her work is a highly coloured, painted mannequin, which gives it a look of a strange figure from another dimension, She says of her work “Telluric Insurgencies I extends my interest in contemporary cartographies, a field my artwork has engaged with for some time, as well as potential relationships between interior and exterior worlds. Put another way, the work suggests that boundaries between self and environment might not necessarily be as distinct as they are often perceived to be. Although ‘telluric’ means ‘from the earth’.”

The Kaipara Wallace Arts Trust Award went to Glen Hayward for 50 cent vs count of fate. Tor this he gets a three-month residency at the Altes Spital in Solothurn, Switzerland. The artist says of his small (40mm high) painted, carved rimu skull of a small rat, “Old houses are littered with dead rats. The living ones I have a dread of, [it is their tails I think] but once they are dead and no longer stinky and it is just their bones, I feel their dignity returns, ’cos we’re all god’s creatures right? I like the idea of it being kind of like a smudge on the wall, this tiny little piece absurdly invested in. I am never sure about the meaning of the objects I present; kind of more interested in some sort of experiential understanding, that locates in the thing in front of you, doesn’t ask you to disappear elsewhere in pursuit of the work.”

The Wallace Arts Trust Vermont Award went David McCracken’s involute and transmission, one of his huge mechanical tread constructions works in corten steel. He receives a three-month residency at the Vermont Studio Center in Vermont, USA. "My intention is to make a work that contains – in fact is built around a fundamental contradiction – in this case between material, vernacular and form. I have found that this allows viewers to project meaning on to the object in a way that engenders a feeling of surprise and profundity. I have taken the ‘equation’ for formulating this sort of composition from my interest in literary language and phrasing."

First runner-up award went to Raewyn Turner and Brian Harris, who received $2500 for their sculptural work Verdugos consisting of winter fruit tree sapling branches, hemp string, copper wire, metal and wood, electric motor, radio This combination of natural materials metals and modern appliances is like a primitive apparatus for receiving and broadcasting information

Second runner-up award winner Noel Ivanoff also received $2500 for his work Slider – Black 1, a stunning abstract work consisting of strong wipes of black/indigo paint, very much like the works of Callum Innes but with a more sophisticated finish.

The jury award  went to Stephen Ellis for The Anchor Drags, a huge remarkably detailed drawing in ballpoint pen and correction fluid depicting a wild sea with a surreal construction of household items floating above the waves. The People’s Choice Award, worth $750, will be determined after the touring Travelling Finalists Exhibition has concluded.

The 2014 awards were judged by prominent art practitioners Andrew Clifford, Andrew McLeod, Peter Panyoczki, Terry Stringer and Linda Tyler – as well as Manulani Aluli-Meyer and Richard Maloy who were joined by Terry Stringer and Linda Tyler for the Fulbright-Wallace Arts Trust Award panel. The Award Winners & Travelling Finalists exhibition will be exhibited at: Pah Homestead, TSB Bank Wallace Arts Centre: September 2 - November 9. Pataka Art + Museum, Porirua November 29-February 8. Wallace Gallery Morrinsville: February 25-April 19. The Salon des Refusés will be exhibited at the Pah Homestead September 2-October 19.

PUBLIC EVENTS
Art in the Mix, Thursday September 18, 7.30pm.

Unique cocktails - Master mixers - All in the name of Art

Three master mixologists are designing unique cocktails, inspired by winning artworks from the 23rd Annual Wallace Art Awards 2014.