Nelsonians make art awards finals

Three Nelsonians have been named as finalists in the prestigious Wallace Art Awards, which will be announced on Monday.

Ken Laws, Dan Campion and Cindy Flook will all make the trip to TSB Bank Wallace Arts Centre at the newly restored Pah Homestead in Auckland.

Nineteen years ago, James Wallace established the Annual Wallace Art Awards, which are now the longest-surviving and largest annual art awards of their kind in New Zealand. The awards comprise prizes of more than $160,000 and four winners receive valuable residencies at prestigious institutions. Many of the works are purchased by the trust each year.

The Nelson artists say simply being named as one of the 100 finalists is reward enough in itself.

The awards are given for contemporary New Zealand painting, sculpture, drawing and unique photography to encourage the visual arts in New Zealand and, in particular, to reward those producing outstanding work.

This year the entries will be judged by Philip Trusttum, Peter Gibson-Smith and Sara Hughes.

Laws says getting to the finals meant he was heading in the right direction with his stainless steel sculptures. "I've entered a couple of times and never got anywhere, so to finally get a letter saying I got through was pretty amazing."

His work Swept Away is about one's ties to home and trying to hold your ground in an environment that changes all the time.

Flook's Long Walk is based on a novel by Stephen King in which contestants in a gruelling walking contest pit themselves against each other for an unknown prize.

She says the digital print on aluminium is about a rite of passage for young men where there can be only one winner.

"In the end, the winner of the prize gets everything he wants for the rest of his life," Flook says. "I quite liked that."

Dan Campion's Kiss Me Softly almost never made it to the awards. He missed the message saying he had made the finals and, two days before the work was due to arrive in Auckland, he got a phone call asking: "Where is it?"

So he arranged to have a friend fly up with the 30kg resin-encased piece to make sure it got there in time.

"I didn't think twice about doing it. It had to get there."

It is the first time he has entered. He said to himself he would not "go for it" unless he felt he had a piece that was good enough to win.

"Not that I expect to, but there is a level the piece has to achieve."

Kiss Me Softly depicts a gun shooting a skull covered in hundreds and thousands. Campion says it was a comment on artwork and how, so often, it lacks content.

Work should have a deeper meaning, though he admits a bullet going into a skull is a "somewhat aggressive approach" to spreading the message.

• The Wallace Art Awards, Monday, September 6, at the TSB Bank Wallace Arts Centre.

- © Fairfax NZ News