Winning work honours the pioneers
A CENTRAL Otago landscape that is both a political statement and homage to the toil of pioneers has secured the Central Otago award at the Arts Gold Awards 2017.
Bannockburn artist Gail de Jong’s Carrick Water Race won the $3000 Nock Art Foundation Outstanding Central Otago Artist Award.
The $5000 Russell Henderson Charitable Trust and Perpetual Guardian Supreme Award was won by Blue Black, of Dunedin, for his artwork Repotted II.
De Jong said her Central Otago award came as a ‘‘big surprise’’ but she was ‘‘incredibly affirmed’’ by the feedback she received.
Her oil painting was of a historic water race that provided water for her property, near the Nevis Valley, and was both a political statement and tribute to the early pioneers of the region, she said.
‘‘There is a political underpinning . . . The water race winds down in the middle of nowhere and it has a magic quality and every time I look at it I’m completely blown away by those early pioneers who built it so long ago. I want to remind people to value water and respect the work of those pioneers, our ancestors. Every time I make a painting of this area I think about the people who came here first.’’
Judges Linda Tyler, of Auckland, and Denise Copland, of Dunedin, said de Jong’s work was ‘‘quintessentially Central Otago’’, utilising ‘‘complex layering of skeins of oil paint in a rich colour palette’’.
The winning artwork of Black, who was not at the prizegiving ceremony, was ‘‘distinctly original’’ and ‘‘imbued with associations of gratitude, warmth and love’’.
Two $1000 merit awards were also made, to Inge Doesburg, of Dunedin, for Soliloquy I, an oil on gesso representing the crossing from Bluff to Stewart Island; and Marion Mewburn, of Millers Flat, for From earth we rise, a trio of doublevesselled clay and dirt pots.