Trust Waikato National Contemporary Art Award now open

Entry to The Trust Waikato National Contemporary Art Award is now open, offering artists from both Hamilton and right across New Zealand the opportunity to showcase their work in this prominent national competition and feature in a major exhibition at the Waikato Museum.

The annual Trust Waikato National Contemporary Art Award is hosted by the Waikato Museum. The impetus behind the awards is to provide New Zealand artists with an opportunity to appear in an overview of national artistic practice and feature in a major exhibition.

Natasha Conland, Curator of Contemporary Art, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki, Auckland; is this year's nationally and internationally acclaimed adjudicator of the Award. She writes regularly on contemporary art for journals and catalogues in the Asia Pacific region. Significant recent curatorial projects include group exhibition Mystic Truths (2007), the SCAPE Biennial of Art in Public Space (2006), CAFÉ 2, Busan Biennale, South Korea (2006), and et al.'s The Fundamental Practice for New Zealand's representation to the Venice Biennale, (2005).

Artists can enter online via the entry form on Waikato Museum's website: http://www.waikatomuseum.co.nz/. The online form allows entrants to load, resize and edit images as part of uploading their entry. Those using movie or other media in their entries have the option of providing screen capture of single images and a link to a website or Utube.

Waikato Museum director Kate Vusoniwailala says the Trust Waikato National Contemporary Art Award is a premier contemporary event that affords New Zealand artists a platform from which to launch and display their works to a large and varied audience. It has put Hamilton on the map for refusing to shy away from controversy and promoting debate about what is fresh and innovative in art.

"The Trust Waikato National Contemporary Art Award is one of the leading occasions for artists across New Zealand. The event is eight years old now and has grown in both sophistication and recognition since its inception in 2000.

"Last year, we moved to an online entry form to increase accessibility and convenience for entering artists. The awards consistently attract a high calibre of entries and we look forward to presenting this year's entries."

The Trust Waikato National Contemporary Art Award is sponsored by Trust Waikato and was initiated by the Waikato Society of Arts. The prize pool for this year's Trust Waikato National Contemporary Art Awards is $15,000.

Last year's winner was Boris Dornbusch for his work Resonance, described as both simple and complex by the 2007 judge Dr Leonhard Emmerling. The work is based on the audio interview and clay sculpture pieces of a 25-year-old male, who was about to leave New Zealand. Emmerling says the sense of sadness and the power of silence struck him most about the piece.

Entries for the Trust Waikato National Contemporary Art Awards are now open and close 20 June 2008.