This year marks a watershed for printmaking in this country, with one of our largest art awards appraising print and paint separately.
The New Zealand Painting and Printmaking Award is in its 22nd year, and in the past has bestowed a $20,000 Award on whichever artwork, print or paint, the judge has deemed most worthy.
With the Waikato Society of Arts managing to raise increased funds, the decision was made to split the Award into separate Printmaking and Painting Awards, each of $15,000 alongside Merit Awards of $2,000.
This positions the NZPPA as the largest award for printmaking nationwide, while retaining its significance as a major painting prize too.
To collate an exhibition of 60 finalists from over 400 entries, and to select the four prize recipients were judges Dr Carole Shepheard and Evan Woodruffe. Carole Shepheard is a fierce advocate for printmaking in New Zealand, and splitting the Award is the fruition of a decade of her pushing for better equity.
Both Carole and Evan quickly decided to choose equal numbers of printmakers and paintings for the finalists, along with one major award recipient and one Merit for each.
The show really mixed up the aesthetics of both, with one painter mimicking the Ben-Day dots of screen-printing, and one printmaker using stretched canvas as their ground.
Printmaking is usually relatively small, limited by the size of the press, and editioned, yet here most prints were unique and the largest work was by a printmaker, and the smallest by a painter.
While the Main Award for Printmaking went to Taranaki-based artist Jenny Halli, the other three came back to Tamaki Makaurau Auckland, and surprisingly all three are connected to the AUT School of Visual Arts.
The Merit Award for Printmaking was given to Struan Hamilton, Senior Technician at the AUT Printmaking studios. Recent Masters Graduate and now tutor there, Tony Guo received the Main Award for Painting, with Masters alumni Cora-Allan Lafaiki-Twiss taking the Merit.
EVAN WOODRUFFE, Studio Art Supplies
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