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Diptych tops NZ Art Awards

Monday 23 February 2015, 12:27PM

By Toi Ohomai Institute of Technology

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Diptych tops at NZ art awards
Diptych tops at NZ art awards Credit: Anne Shirley

Bay of Plenty Polytechnic tutor and artist, Nicol Sanders-O‘Shea, has further cemented her name in the artistic world, winning the Supreme Award in the Waikato Society of Arts New Zealand Painting and Printmaking 2015 Awards.

Announced in Hamilton on Friday, 13 February, the Award is New Zealand’s largest cash award in the fields of painting and printmaking. The $20,000 prize is sponsored by the Philip Vela Family Trust.

Nicol’s pieces were selected from 370 entries and made the 50 finalist artworks list.

Dr Anne Kirker, award selector, has curated at major New Zealand and Australian galleries and published a survey on New Zealand women artists. She presented Nicol with the Award at the Hamilton Gardens Pavilion where the exhibition of finalists will remain until February 26.

For Nicol, an accomplished printmaker who is the recipient of a number of other prestigious awards, the win is a career highlight and the culmination of a significant amount of work.

“I created this work especially for this award show, creating a diptych to the maximum allowed dimensions. I had researched Dr Kirker knowing she was trained as a printmaker, therefore I knew I could create a work that was conceptually and technically rich.

“I spent at least six months creating the work from my garage studio, late nights and several weekends creating stencils and printing layer upon layer of colour elements and illustrations to get the two works to balance and work together as one work.

“The selector spoke about the work at length and understood every decision I had made, from an artist perspective; I believe she understood the work completely, which was very satisfying to hear and to witness.”

Nicol fits her art practice in to her busy schedule as Programme Coordinator of Bay of Plenty Polytechnic’s Bachelor of Creative Industries degree, heading a team of other talented practicing artists.

 

Artist's statement:
'Exchanges' is created with multiple screen-printed illustrations to investigate the cross-over of memory an interpretation, mixing my childhood experiences with my current parental reality. Coded gestures, schoolboys fighting and animals attacking are familiar triggers associated with growing up and psychological consequence of guilt, fear and anxiety. My work supports and contradicts the reproductive nature of the printmaking process. I do not edit, but instead play with repetitive printed elements within each work.