Jewellers scoop Auckland object awards

A FORMER Gisborne artist has been named winner of Auckland Council’s annual nationwide competition for object art.
Auckland-based contemporary jeweller Raewyn Walsh picked up the $5000 premier prize at the 2011 OBJECTive Art Awards, pipping more than 80 entrants to the post.
Guest judge Deborah Crowe said that the first prize work, Vessel 2011, was striking for its simplicity and confident in its execution.
“This work stood out to the judging panel for its poise, deft manipulation of materials and sophisticated referencing of the past in a contemporary context,” she said.
The runner-up prizes also went to Auckland jewellers, Kvetoslava Sekanova coming second with The White Book, a brooch created from newsprint, silver, paint and mixed media; and third place going to Jasmine Watson for her Subsequence series of sterling silver and champleve enamel brooches.
Each of the winning works displayed “a consummate understanding of materials dovetailed with considered exploration and communication of ideas”, Deborah Crowe said.
Work by 33 of the artists who entered the OBJECTive awards will be on show until December 2 at Auckland’s new visual and performing arts hub, Mangere Arts Centre: Nga Tohu o Uenuku.
Walsh has mostly lived in Auckland since leaving Gisborne Girls’ High School in the mid-1980s.
She is booked to stage an exhibition at Tairawhiti Museum at the end of next year.