Peter Dornauf – 10 March, 2025

Art awards are strange anomalous beasts. Is one piece of art any ‘better’ per se than another? The answer is, no. Or yes and no. Yes, because it may be more innovative, ground breaking, especially clever in its delivery, and less derivative. And no, because most of the stuff that surfaces in these competitions are usually of equal stature in technical delivery and handling of the subject.

So, what does it all come down to in the end? It has, of course, to do with the judge’s subjective and personal preferences. It often has to do, higher up the food chain, with the prevailing fashions of the time. Just look at the Walters. When last did we see a work on canvas selected, let alone win at this level? Not trendy enough.

It’s a funny old business, art.

Which brings me to the 2025 New Zealand Painting and Printmaking Awards currently on show at Artspost, Hamilton.

First the painting award. To start with, there is a dual selection process involved. From the 261 applicants, judge Matthew Browne chose 30 works, and from that selection, chose again, the winner.

I am not the first to point out that Browne is an artist himself in the abstract tradition, and of the 30 works selected, a very high percentage were from the same artistic genre. Abstraction predominated. So it will come as no surprise that a work of abstraction was crowned the winner.

It was a large work by Rebecca Wallis, entitled A Loosening of Order. Minimalist and foggy in its appearance, purple in colour, it presented a nice tension between geometric structure (with its framing device around the edges of the canvas) and the more flat and amorphous quality of the paint in its centre. In Walis’ own words she was questioning “our desire for order… for the fixed”.

Not too far away in the gallery space hung another abstract work that looked like it could have come out of the same stable. Day Glo by Glen Hutchins, presented a very similar construction, though based and inspired very loosely on a landscape formation. Either of them, given their distinct similarities (even their size was the same) could have walked off with the prize.

I know it’s said that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but one of the abstract works in the show was simply and literally channelling Judy Millar.

A favourite, for this reviewer, would have to be Alan Ibell’s Lessons Learned from Poor Decisions, which managed to fuse both elements of abstraction and figure into one piece. The artist is singularly adept at depicting some psychological or existential drama via minimal means with panache.

Abstraction is a well-worn trope, over 100 years old, so what we expect from it today is something fresh rather than a repetition of the same old formulas, some of which were on show here. But one of those which came closest to innovation were Penelope Civil’s Tousled, though even here there were echoes of Gretchen Albrecht.

Cara Fotofili’s Shoo-bee-do-bee-doo-bop displayed an inventive combination of forms. Sean Hill’s Electricergy was another that revealed a novel exploration of shape and compositional construction. Hannah Ireland’s Skewed Skewer involved an interesting dialectic between figure and geometric elements, while Erin-Monique O’Brien’s mix of collaged origami ensembles against an abstracted grid pattern was a departure from the norm.

Of the rest, Cam Munroe’s Small Study, caught my eye with its collection of enigmatic forms: simply drawn - black on white.

Last, but not least, were Hana Carpenter’s small but exquisite landscapes (2 of them, entitled Imposition) revealing subtle handing of colour and a refined compositional structure. Full of atmospheric nuance, delicately articulated, this was the landscape genus presented with all the force a judicious minimalist treatment can deliver.

To the prints. The winner on the night, nominated by judge, Lynn Taylor, was Sing Together, an image of a dead bird, pinned up and labelled, a woodcut by Ben Reid—a subject previously explored and treated in similar fashion by textile artist, Marilyn Rea-Menzies.

One of the standout works in the print section would have to be Nostalgic Pool, a woodblock by Angus Collis. One is reminded of David Hockney and his swimming pool paintings from the 1960’s, but Collis has captured in his clean, hard-edged treatment and subdued tones the essence of something poignantly conjured from yesteryear.

Another arresting work was Guthery Lane, a monoprint by Carolyn Currie depicting architectural forms in urban spaces, where at certain angles, shape and line become transformative, to become an artwork in themselves.

The issue of imitation raised its head in the show again in the work of Oliver King, When I was little I used to pray beside my bed, a digital print on acrylic and mixed media. One couldn’t help but notice the apparent replication of something straight out of the studio of Don Driver, complete with dangling chains.

It wouldn’t be an art award if there wasn’t some controversy involved. Art seems to attract that sort of thing. Ironically, on the one hand, we like to think that art is here to challenge, question and provoke. But somehow this gets lost if people are afraid of causing offence these days, although this often depends on which side of the political fence they sit.

This was the case with a work called The Death of Peace, by Geoff McGowan—images of a wounded dove juxtaposed against Israeli and Palestinian flags. Deemed too controversial, it was withdrawn from the show. Shades of the kerfuffle at the Hamilton migrant centre recently over politically disputed murals.

As for discernible subjects, all the regular topics were covered: social media issues, end of the world worries, colonial critiques, life journey material, death and the mystery of life, the joy of flowers, ecology crisis and social justice.

Overall, there were some bold, innovative and interesting works on display that will reward any attentive viewer with varying degrees of aesthetic pleasure.

Peter Dornauf

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