PHOTOGRAPHER WINS PRESTIGIOUS KAIPARA WALLACE ARTS TRUST AWARD

The Wallace Art Awards, now in its 25th year, is the longest surviving and largest annual art award of its kind in New Zealand, supporting, promoting, and exposing New Zealand contemporary art and artists. This year’s Kaipara Wallace Arts Trust Award, one of eight awards with prizes amounting to over $220K, was awarded to Jeremy Blincoe for his 2016 work Tropic of Chaos.

The work, inspired by the book of the same title by Christian Parentia, is a composite image formed from the photographed subject being digitally worked on at a later stage. It is bold and highly produced, and the patina of advertising aesthetics is apparent — no surprise given that’s where Jeremy’s background lies. But, in contrast to advertising’s usual intent, Blincoe has wider social and environmental concerns to address in his work.

In his artist statement, Jeremy Blincoe describes his work as, “set in or against a variety of strange and mysterious natural settings that I either shoot on location or edit during post-production: limestone and rock caves, the undulating dunes of a sandy desert, the cracked and blackened-earth shores of a dried-up lake … While adding dramatic visual impact, they also function as signifiers of the beauty and/or degradation and destruction our natural environment suffers through human intervention and natural disaster.”

Jeremy’s work will be shown as part of the Wallace Art Award Winners and Travelling Finalists exhibition, on at Pah Homestead, Auckland, from September 6 to November 13; then continuing on to Wallace Gallery Morrinsville, from November 30 to February 5; and finally to Pataka Art + Museum, Porirua, from February 26 to May 7.