Molly Morpeth Canaday Award Painting and Drawing 2021 Full exhibition catalogue

molly morpeth canaday award painting and drawing

2021 exhibition catalogue

molly morpeth canaday award painting and drawing

The organisers of this year’s Molly Morpeth Canaday Award Painting and Drawing, Arts Whakatāne and Whakatāne District Council, are delighted to present this major national exhibition with associated public programming.

Our appreciation goes to the judges – Guest judge, Karl Chitham, and preliminary judges Francis McWhannell, Natasha Matila-Smith and Hanahiva Rose – for their commitment to supporting artists and bringing increasingly innovative art to our community. Special thanks also go to our supporting sponsors, volunteers and the organising teams. Their collective generosity has contributed to the current status of the award as one of the most recognised art events in New Zealand.

This exhibition features works by artists from Aotearoa, selected from a record-breaking number of entries by three independent Preliminary Judges. Winners have been selected by Guest Judge, Karl Chitham. Those that were selected present an exciting cross-section of contemporary works that extend beyond the practice of painting and drawing.

This year, our vision is to encourage and celebrate the development of painting and drawing on a national level and reward artists who create outstanding works. The exhibition partners Arts Whakatāne and the Whakatāne District Council are heartened by the strength of commitment this demonstrates to painting and drawing, as an arts discipline, and to the Molly Morpeth Canaday Award.

The inaugural art award was held in 1985 - to launch the Whakatāne Community Arts Council (now known as Arts Whakatāne). In 1991, the Molly Morpeth Canaday Trust became the principal award sponsor and gained naming rights for the exhibition and its programme. In 2012, the Award moved into Te Kōputu a te whanga a Toi’s galleries, marking the beginning of the Arts Whakatāne and Whakatāne District Council partnership. This award is a non-acquisitive annual award that alternates its focus between Painting and Drawing and Three-Dimensional Art. Nichola Waugh Co-ordinator

2–3

acknowledgments Guest Judge Karl Chitham Preliminary Judges Francis McWhannell Natasha Matila-Smith Hanahiva Rose MMCA Co-ordinator Nichola Waugh (Arts Whakatāne), Whakatāne Libraries and Galleries Exhibitions Team Tangimeriana Rua Israel Randell Amanda Perfect Jordan Davey-Emms Megan Thomson Exhibition curator Israel Randell Entry Administration Sophie Robinson MMCA Project Team Israel Randell, Amanda Perfect Jordan Davey-Emms, Heather Hourgian David Poole, Amanda Melville, Jacqui Hughes, Pam Mossman, Patricia Long, Adrienne Ranson, Greg Reid, Christine Bowering.

Marketing Cherie Stevenson from Stellar Creative Marketing Photography Nichola Waugh and artist supplied Graphic Design Michael Hourgian Website and catalogue publication Nichola Waugh

sponsors Major Award Sponsor Molly Morpeth Canaday Trust Award Sponsors Akel Family Hon. Anne Tolley Whakatāne Society of Arts and Craft Accounting Biz Kay and Ross Boreham

arts WHAKATANE

Support sponsors

arts WHAKATANE

Awards Molly Morpeth Canaday Trust Major Award - $10,000 Akel Award - $4,000 Arts Whakatāne Third Place - $3,000 Craigs Investment Partners Youth Award - $2,500 Robinson Law Highly Commended - $1,000 Merit Awards (all of $500 value) 4 Art Sake Gallery Merit Award Gordon Harris Merit Award Kay and Ross Boreham and Accounting Biz Local Artist Merit Award Diverse Graphics People's Choice Award Whakatāne Society of Arts and Craft & Hon. Anne Tolley Merit Award

4–5

guest judge Karl Chitham (Ngā Puhi, Te Uriroroi) is the Director of The Dowse Art Museum and was previously Director and Curator of Tauranga Art Gallery Toi Tauranga. He has also held curatorial roles at Rotorua Museum Te Whare Taonga o Te Arawa, University of Waikato, Whakatāne Museum and Gallery and Objectspace. He has a Master’s Degree in Sculpture from Elam School of Fine Arts, Auckland University. Chitham has judged numerous regional art awards and was a judge for the 2019 Occam New Zealand Book Awards and was on the selection panel for the New Zealand Pavilion at the Venice Biennale for 2021.

He was co-author of the recently published book Crafting Aotearoa: A Cultural History of Making in New Zealand and Wider Moana Oceania.

Recent curatorial projects have included Ā Mua: New Lineages of Making co-curated with Kolokesa U Māhina-Tuai, Traverse: Mark Igloliorte cocurated with Wendy Richdale, and Whatu Manawa: Celebrating the Weaving of Matakino Lawless.

preliminary Judges Natasha Matila-Smith (b1984) is an arts practitioner who lives and works in Tāmaki Makaurau. Natasha holds a Master of Fine Arts degree from Elam School of Fine Arts. Her curatorial and writing practice broadly explores ideas around Indigenous identities, with the aim of increasing a truer sense of agency for marginalised voices. In 2020, she was announced as the inaugural Pacific Curator-in-Residence for the Asia-Pacific Triennial 10 at QAGOMA in Brisbane. Natasha is also a writer who has contributed to national and international publications and has exhibited both locally and internationally in Rotterdam International Film Festival, Te Uru, Bus Projects, Melbourne; The Dowse Museum, Wellington.

Francis McWhannell is a writer and exhibition-maker from Aotearoa based in Tāmaki Makaurau. He holds a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in Museums and Cultural Heritage and a Master of Arts in Art History from the University of Auckland. In 2019, he was appointed curator of the wellknown Fletcher Trust Collection. He is a passionate advocate for the arts and especially for early-career artists from Aotearoa. Francis has written for various arts and culture websites and publications including The Spinoff, The Pantograph Punch, Art Collector, Art New Zealand, and Art News New Zealand. He has produced essays for exhibitions at ST PAUL St Gallery and the Gus Fisher Gallery. He is co-author of two books on historical photography, Bitter fruit: Australian photographs to 1963 (2017) and Broad sunlight: Early West African photography (2020).

Hanahiva Rose (Te Ātiawa, Ngāi Tahu, Ngāti Toa Rangatira, Ra’iātea, Huahine) is the assistant curator of contemporary art and collections at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery in Ngāmotu New Plymouth. Hanahiva is regularly published for her research into modern and contemporary art practices in Aotearoa. She has written exhibition texts for a range of institutions, including the Dowse Art Museum, Adam Art Gallery and Enjoy Public Art Gallery, and articles for Art New Zealand, Art News, Artzone, Capital Magazine, The Spinoff, The Pantograph Punch, among others.

6–7

.

Aimee Ratana and Maraea Timutimu Whakatāne and Tauranga Painted Whatu 2020 Paint, ink, cotton, wool, twine, and ribbon 600 x 1500mm

This work combines Māori weaving techniques of whatu with layers of paint.

Merging techniques in contemporary materials, resulting in individual strands being fused into one form.

Akiko Diegel Auckland Notes 2020 0.25mm gel ink pen, 3B1 recycled notebook, Perspex box 200 x 200 x 40mm

Observation of everyday life is a fundamental practice for making our lives better, easier, more stylish, and giving our lives aesthetic comfort.

Having observed everyday life and positioning myself as a "consumer" gives me a better understanding of the concept of the existence of products and the culture and philosophy behind them. With this work, I reposition myself as a consumer to re-present the consumptions of everyday life. This drawing reinforces the role that we, as intelligent humans, play in having a deeper understanding of the plethora of products and conspicuous consumption that surrounds us and affects our lives.

8–9

Alex Miln Tauranga Awkward (A Cultural Bi-pass) 2020 Plywood and aluminium 1200 x 1500 x 70 mm

Awkward is a work deeply rooted in the evolution of the NZ tourism story. The word Maoriland came about in 1860 as an alternative name for New Zealand as a way to promote tourism and was used as the cable address for the Department of Tourism and Health Resorts in 1901. Other countries would offer up their tourist attractions of mountains, coastlines, rivers, and lakes, but as only NZ could claim the unique Maori culture as its own, Maoriland was born. In today’s setting, Maoriland is just a cheap theme park, commercialised, monetised, and Europeanised; the taking of someone else’s culture as if it were a curiosity for the express purposes of wealthextraction and exploitation. Is this one of the great Kiwi myths? Our European view of NZ-Maori culture and our uneven-handed approach? Awkward questions for popular and prevailing conceptions of ‘the New Zealand tourist story’. The work engages viewers to challenge their own New Zealand story; to look under the rug, to see the shadow, to ingest the popular and unpopular, the familiar and unfamiliar – to confront the message we would rather drive by.

Alice Alva Wellington Bored Housewife 2020 Stranded embroidery thread, silk on suiting linen and calico 580 x 400mm

Using cotton as the pencil mark, Bored Housewife leans into traditional still-life conventions by utilising the objects that the artist has at hand. In Alva’s case, this is represented by a collision of plastic Windex bottles, various alcoholic glass vessels, a broken vibrator, and an ashtray. Each of these objects is comprised of hundreds of stitches, acting as symbols of the repetitive and somewhat mundane nature of domestication. Soft, delicate, and playful, Bored Housewife questions the parallel patriarchal hierarchies of power that rule visual arts and job markets,where textiles and housework are often experienced as marginal disciplines and occupations.

10–11

Alldon DESIGNS Auckland Untitled (unknown cookie) 2020 Oil on Canvas 1010 x 750mm

alldon.DESIGNS aims to project ideas and dialogue around digital frameworks to push them into a Fine Arts discipline.

The language used is topographical, challenging the traditional landscape. Using devices such as white spaces alludes to a digital gaze. The discipline here is oil on canvas and aims to initiate conversations around how we translate landscape in paintings today. By eliminating the use of the entire canvas, the foreshortening controls and guides the viewer, demanding that the viewer looks at landscapes differently. In a technical manner, the white space pushes the paintings away from the landscape and into an abstracted moment. The sanding process reveals the underpainting, distorting the layers of paint and creating a tension of what we can or cannot see. Stripping the painting back to its framework gives an advantage of being in front and behind the painting, alluding to how the painting started. The title of the work goes back to our digital playground and what is remembered and what is memory. How can we remember what we have viewed or how our memory serves our needs?

Amanda Watson Raglan Whaingaroa Raglan, April 2018 & March 2019; Near the source of the Kapuni River, Taranaki, June 2019; In my studio in Hamilton 2019 Ink, graphite, acrylic paint on canvas 1300 x 1500mm

This painting reveals marks that were made in collaboration with the land on the mountain in Taranaki and in my studio environment, by working with unstretched canvas directly on uneven surfaces. By letting things take place between materials, processes, and geographical territories, surprising discoveries about ‘place’ can show themselves. This way of painting enables a multifarious experience of place to be seen in the work, as ‘painting occasions’ made at different times and places build up on the painting’s surface, to give voice to previously unuttered stories.

12–13

Andrea Bolima Auckland Mauve in the corner 2020 Oil on canvas 850 x 800mm

Andrea Bolima Auckland Bluey one, this one 2020 Oil on canvas 800 x 850 mm

14–15

Antony Densham Auckland C12.2020 2020 1000 x 750mm

A Tenuous Grip On Reality. Our brains are wired to look for what's familiar. The tension I'm looking for is an uncanny sense of the familiar. It's there, almost recognisable then it's gone, not unlike that word that's sometimes on the tip of your tongue.

You can feel it forming then it falls away. I’m looking for a middle ground, to confound the space somehow through the interchange of revealing and concealing.

Aroha Novak Dunedin Poutama pēpi blankie 2020 2020 1300 x 750mm

16–17

Benjamin Work Auckland Stop, breathe, and proceed/Motutapu 2020 Acrylic on canvas 1500 x 1500mm

Motutapu, The Sacred Isles is an ongoing series throughout the Moana exploring this significant place, a sanctuary from conflict, a third space, or a middle ground. This ancient gateway stood as a bastion for those entering or departing on their journey. Benjamin has traveled to three of their locations - Tongatapu, Rarotonga, and Tāmaki Makaurau - exploring these ancient connections and utilising them as a gateway or portal to re-engage with cultural practices, both current and ancient.

Bonco Auckland Virgo in red and purple 2020 Oil on linen 1000 x 1000mm

“Virgo in red and purple” depicts a hidden constellation of Virgo. This work sits within a series I am currently painting which was inspired

by God’s command to Abraham in Genesis 15 to go outside and count the stars. The idea of looking beyond oneself and undertaking an illogical or possibly irrational task could be seen as a meaningful metaphor for life. My work is about finding the spiritual through an investigation of geometric forms. I take inspiration from other artists working around similar concepts such as Piet Mondrian, Emma Kunst and Alfred Jensen to name but a few.

18–19

Bryce Brown Te Puke Correspondence 2020 Acrylic paint, MSA varnish on stretch canvas, framed 650 x 550mm

Paper letters seem to be a thing from a bygone era.

Very rarely do we go out to our letterbox, bring in a handwritten letter, correspondence from afar, and sit down to enjoy reading it. There is a charm and a craft in these letters. They usually have a beginning, middle, and end. They tell a short story of sorts. The individual's style of handwriting, the stationery chosen, its point of origin and the postage stamp used, maybe from another part of the world accompanied by a 'par avion' stamp!

Cathy Tuato’o Ross Whangārei Danny and his dogs 2020 Ink, gouache, crayon on paper 1500 x 960mm

Danny and his dogs. Master and his hounds. I have borrowed the format from the photographic studios of the Victorian era, which in turn borrowed from a long history of European painting of the rich and nouveau riche. Carte-devisite and cabinet card photographs were hugely popular in colonial New Zealand, with photographers being contributors to the creation of individual, social and cultural identities.

Because of their reproducible nature, such photographs served anthropological purposes and informed a visually literate public about the ‘other’ as well as constructing visual identities for the sitters themselves.

20–21

Christine Cathie Auckland Light Cast - The Peach Tree 2020 Acrylic on linen 600 x 400mm

What I am looking to achieve in my paintings are often the same principles that concern me as a glass artist - translucence, light and a sense of captured movement. These paintings started from studies in charcoal; taking influence from the play of light and shade in my home, exploring the interplay of planes, translating and abstracting these sketches to painting. The works are instinctive yet measured. An underpainting, shifting within each work, creates a sense of energy through light and space, slowly revealing its final form. This sits around, and within a tempering of neutral tones, creates an exploratory space within which the imagination is free to wander.

Christine Cathie Auckland Light Cast - The Sky Acrylic on linen 600 x 400mm

22–23

Claudia Kogachi Auckland The Opera House 2020 Acrylic on canvas inside ceramic frame 1200 x 1200mm

Claudia Jowitt Auckland Baka IV 2020 Acrylic and spray paint with rayon yarn, Fijian vau (fibre made from hibiscus bark), copperleaf, paua shell, kina shell, cowrie shells, moulded acrylic, clay forms, and bronze powder on linen 1040 x 1040mm

My paintings are a physical accumulation of gestures from both traditional and more domestic tools from the kitchen.

Natural elements gathered between Aotearoa & Fiji along with materials from haberdashery collections are embedded into sedimentary layers. Indigenous Pacific practices such as tapa, tattoo, carving & weaving are of influence, in the distilling down of context and knowledge systems to basic forms, marks or actions translated into visual patterns and rhythms. My practice is driven by mediation on broader conversations about painting, femininity and creating works that speak to a physical sense of place in the South Pacific and my own link to certain places within this context. Developing my take on a contemporary South Pacific abstract painting practice. The title Baka is a type of Fijian native branched coral.

24–25

Constanza Briceno Papamoa Patchwork 2020 Acrylic, charcoal, and pastel on canvas 1020 x 1020mm

Inspired by a handwritten calligraphy notebook from childhood, my artistic production aims to show the beauty of the mistake, to explore repetition and process. Freed from seeking perfection, I create asymmetrical structures across the canvas. In a methodical disorder, these structures often recall known landscapes and experiences. Patchwork is a colourful abstract painting inspired by the knitting, by the action of adding to that making, by those stories told to the next generation, and by those women who invest their time on each line of that blanket.

Cora-Allan Wickliffe Auckland Inter-generational practice 2020 Barkcloth and traditional ink 1310 x 1220mm

Ahu, tapa, or barkcloth is one of the oldest forms of passing along traditional knowledge throughout the Moana. Inter-generational practice originates from a performance installation and is now a symbolic metaphor of expectation and challenge of how we may experience Pacific heritage art forms. No longer stagnant on the wall, this piece of hiapo has a strong memory of action attached to it and asks the viewer to search beyond the large streaks of black to find patterns that illuminate its story as they are asked to depart from any experience they have had with Pacific tapa cloth.

26–27

Deborah Body Auckland Its_all_over_now 2020 Oil on board 260 x 300 mm

My work is drawn from observations of a melancholic disposition. Reflections on the passage of time and degeneration drive my explorations in paint. Through practice, I consider experienced complexities associated with memory, loss and relationships. This year I have particularly focussed on the notion of bittersweet and our ability to harbour conflicting emotions simultaneously. I work from distorted figurative photographs in oil on board.

Ekarasa Doblanovic Auckland Shift 2020 Acrylic on board 1305 x 1180mm

My works investigate colour and composition.

The interest relies in how an image that incorporates three-dimensional aspects emerges through interaction between monochromatic and modular components and diagrammatic colour compositions that are deployed within an expanded field of painting; that is to say, within a field of activity which deconstructs the frame of painting and explores colour, surface and plastic values, in a spatial context. The research main interest arises from a question of how the image in art emerges from visual-material relationships, and, then transcends the bounds of the painted surface into pure sensation.

28–29

Ekaterina Dimieva Auckland Counterflow 2020 Acrylic on linen 900 x 1200mm

Ekaterina Dimieva Auckland Pop 2020 Acrylic on canvas 900 x 1200mm

My work is about differentiation and interference, conflicting intensities, and the state of becoming. My paintings could be viewed as a reflection of the multiplicity in the world surrounding us, but they are also intended to generate their own multiplicity within their own worlds through the complexity of the picture field and the materiality of the paint.

The intention is to create paintings that are “assemblages” charged with tension and combining multiple, interfering forces.

Elizabeth Bird Preston, Australia Acid Reflux 2020 Oil paint on linen 1020 x 1360mm

Elizabeth Bird is an artist from New Zealand, currently residing in Melbourne. She is interested in the act of looking and noticing, compiling mental snapshots from daily life, investigating painting in the expanded field and as a phenomenological compression upon the picture plane. Her paintings denote a specific performative duration, where gestural marks move rhythmically between the chaotic, the automatic, and the contemplative. Pedestalling the frivolous and incautious painterly mark, the artist explores a tenuous balance between the creation of an image which is at once unstable yet assertive.

30–31

Elliot Collins Auckland Every Sea 2020 Oil on Canvas 600 x 450mm

The work Every Sea is at first a pun. The letter C and the words SEA are phonetically the same in English and therein lies the humour when referring to the Pacific Ocean, which also contains 3 letter C’s that all make a different sound. This is also a reference to all the languages in the Pacific and this artist thinks that is something worth remembering, continuing, and saving.

Gaye Jurisich Hamilton Arrival (turbulent) 2020 Acrylic and oil on stretched canvas 1400 x 1400mm

I am interested in the energy created in the composition of the painting surface, taking deliberate advantage of color, shape, and textures of materials. I allow the unintentional line, the mistake, the instinctive thought to come through into my work. The viewer has places to discover their own meanings.

32–33

Gillian Appleby Hastings Suddenly darkness 2020 Oil on canvas 590 x 300mm

A hug is warm until its arms are made of two and not four … and it’s a moment of shame … throwing myself at him with nothing coming back but tallness. Beware the slow dance of friendship.

Hannah Ireland Auckland They Laughed, I Cried 2020 Watercolour, ink and house paint on recycled villa window 902 x 597 x 38mm

Painted directly onto a glass surface, the index of each painting is viewed in reverse when flipped, revealing the finished side. Clothed in a variation of marks that warp, map, and construct the figure, each mark seeks rest upon a surface that resists a harmonic relationship. The process causes initial marks to remain present over the last. This work reflects the act of drawing from the perspective of having a body, rather than that of observing one.

34–35

Hannah Ireland Auckland Fool Stop 2020 Watercolour, ink and house paint on a recycled villa window 597 x 843 x 38mm

Hayley Hewer Wellington ‘Verbose Appetizer’ composition #3 2020 Acrylic on canvas 410 x 305mm

36–37

Heather Hunt Whangārei Inside and out 2020 Marker pen, coloured pencil, ink 700 x 555mm

When we think of our home, spaces inside and out come to mind. Living and working in this house I know it like a second skin. In this drawing, I wanted to see if I could refresh my view of it by disrupting the connection between hand and eye.

Using a pen taped to the end of a two-meter stick, the house was mapped inside and out. Then with left and right hand using coloured pencils, the internal and external spaces were pushed and pulled into focus. This awkward rendering of my house has given me an unexpected perspective and a visceral response to a place I know intimately.

Heidi Brickell Auckland Aohanga 2020 Cotton duck, acrylic gel medium, golden fluid acrylics, string, gesso 400 x 400mm

In the context of whakarauora - the freeing of slaves after generations of repressing and shattering their means to self-knowledge karanga would take place over days. In the desperate hope that they would be believed, returning mōrehu would recount what had happened, and what shreds of self-knowledge they had managed to retain, to convince the whānau they were returning to that they were not enemies coming to plunder them again, but that they belonged. This is what I use my painting for - in a way, a karanga to whanaunga - and to myself for acceptance, sharing what I’ve salvaged.

38–39

Ilena Shadbolt Auckland ...and in the process of becoming light 2020 Oil paint, graphite pencil, chalk pastel, and gesso on canvas 760 x 560mm

Writing is iconographic, yet it remains most valorised for its communicative value. In this piece, cathartic diary entries become another mark in the artist’s palette, rendered illegible, their gestural quality elevated. Paint was applied prior to writing as well as smeared over it. Paint was transported both through an additive paintbrush and the negative, scraping butt of the paintbrush, creating ‘ghost lines’. Once the painting was complete, the material was removed from its frame and nailed loosely to the wall. The canvas’ fibres emerge as an ‘anti-frame’. The canvas-as-page collapses from a receptacle of meaning to an active player in the connotation-denotation dialectic.

Isaac Tait Christchurch Self Portrait 2020 Acrylic on canvas 900 x 600mm

Isaac is a disability activist, poet, and visual artist. His work is powerful and often confrontational, incorporating social and political themes. Influenced by street art, Jean Michel Basquiat and Colin McCahon, he likes to push boundaries. Appearing loose and random at first, through the many layers of paint, he pulls out a great work. His work is often large and almost always acrylic on canvas. Bursting with colour and energy, they are minefields of creative thought on canvas.

40–41

Isabella Dampney Auckland My Neighbour Loves His New Goat 2020 Oil on canvas 1010 x 810mm

During lockdown, my roommate and I were in the backyard when we heard bleating from our neighbour’s small shed. We live downtown in a major metropolitan city. Our neighbour doesn’t drive. He lives with his elderly parents and never leaves the house. How did he get the goat? What will he do with it? Pulling from auto-biographical situations, and drawing with wonky shapes and effluent colours, I try to balance phrasing a painting as a joke, and as a personal narrative. I want to explore the conflicts of hierarchy within the visual language.

Jamie TeHeuheu Christchurch Paintstick drawing X 2020 Paint stick and ink on jute 300 x 250mm

Jamie TeHeuheu is an artist based in Ōtautahi Christchurch. TeHeuheu is a recent graduate of the Ilam School of Fine Arts, after completing his BFA with honours in 2020. Jamie TeHeuheu’s current practice is an ongoing study of the formal qualities of abstract artmaking, emphasising materiality, process and minimalism. TeHeuheu has an interest in reducing picture-making devices to their fundamental elements, to explore how colour, line, texture, different materials and applied processes can evoke varied moods and feelings while leaving room for the viewer to bring their own experiences and emotions to the work.

42–43

Jana Wood Auckland Apricity Daze 2020 Oil paint on rabbit skin gesso on recycled board 600 x 600mm

Within the surfaces of this work, there are streams of feeling and thought that are distinctly celestial in nature, despite my preoccupation with earthly matters and landscape. The action of painting in the studio is always tangible, but it can also be a portal to an ambiguous and latent mind space that opens up the possibility for subconscious action, emergence, precariousness and uncertainty. Alongside the constant tactical decision-making, this space is an antidote to today’s increasingly pre-formatted and industrialised world.

Janet Knighton Hamilton Autumn–99 2020 Mixed media 1200 x 900mm

My current practice investigates visual dialogues addressing recently published, shameful, child homicide statistics in NZ. An unsettling tension pervades through the subject matter and process, resolving in softness and homage to tiny lives lost.

44–45

Jann Lenihan Masterton Drawing the Dole 2020 Pastel, black and white pencil on corrugated cardboard 310 x 450mm

Jolene Pascoe Whangārei Hokianga Daze 2020 Acrylic paint and glitter on glass and wood 460 x 460mm

The concept of sharing the old fashioned values with which I was raised - aroha, kaitiakitanga, and manaakitanga - with my daughter is one of the most important things I can role model as a mother. My work is a narrative of taonga: metaphorical, inherited, and thoughtful acts, passed down through the lines of our whakapapa, with a hope that these continue to be shared in generations to come. My kaupapa: never underestimate the power of kindness, happiness, and empathy with others.

46–47

Julia Holden Auckland Self Portrait (Jodi Clark, after Rita Angus) 2020 Acrylic house paint on figure, archival pigment print 400 x 322mm

Using the body as a living canvas, Self Portrait (Jodi Clark, after Rita Angus) intends a respectful and serious provocation to current conservative boundaries and constrained thinking in relation to the definition of the traditional painted portrait.

Painter Jodi Clark is depicted ‘as’ Rita Angus’s 1929 self portrait, suggesting the ongoing visual conversation with the iconic painter. Captured in the immediacy of the live painting performance and the juicy freshness of wet, not-yet-dry paint is a challenge to photorealism in painting. Jodi ‘becomes’ ‘Rita,’ alluding to the transformative, performative nature of portraiture and the interaction between subject, sitter and viewer.

Kate Lepper Wellington TYPO-FACE (belogngin) 2020 Acrylic paint, 100% cotton mold-made 300gsm paper, webbing, plastic rings, zip, found polypropylene plastic, various found soft plastic packaging waste 550 x 740 x 150mm

This is a painting object. It is a container for one of my misspelt words collected over the past two years during my day job. Making my typos permanent before auto-correct and spell-check erases them forever helps me think about what they reveal. Subpixel rendering is a method enabling high-frequency font signals to be displayed on low-resolution display monitors and retain readability. It is a way to translate complexity into the materiality of the screen.

Perhaps, like fingers trying to articulate an idea in a linear sequence on a keyboard. Meaning can fall out of the fails.

48–49

Ken Clark Christchurch Tangata Tiriti 2020 Acrylic on MDF 595 x 500mm

“Tangata Tiriti” - The Raparapa. The fingers of the maihi symbolising Tangata Whenua entwine with the fingers of the Tangata Tiriti. The red is Māori, the black non-Māori who belong to the land by right of the Treaty. Black not because of evil, but because of the darkness of a lack of knowledge and understanding of a very different culture. The two are coming together in the clasped hand. The white symbolises the hope of peace and willingness to accept the differences and similarities of the two.

Kristina Joyce Rotorua Untitled 2020 House paint on linen 910 x 610mm

In my latest body of work, I have been interested in the ongoing process of making, erasure and repetition where the act of painting is a subject. I am interested in the process of painting using a variety of different household tools.

50–51

Laura Williams Auckland Beloved Son: Coming To the End of the Phallus Sea 2020 Acrylic paint on plyboard 800 x 600mm

Beloved Son: Coming to the End of the Phallus Sea is a revisionary rendering, depicting the impending riverside meeting of Jesus and St John the Baptist. The basis for this version was my 1970s Catholic childhood and education alongside my understanding, misunderstanding and disillusionment when reading the bible as a child. You are my Son, the Beloved; with you, I am well pleased (Mark 1:11). But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees come to his baptism, he said unto them, O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come (Matthew 3:7).

Lizzie Beere Hawkes Bay Oku tūpuna wāhine – ka kite au i a koe ināianei 2020 Mixed media on linen 1200 x 1200mm

My work is a response to research undertaken of my Mana Wahine, exploring the concept: Can a Māori and a Pākehā heart flourish as one? The work examines my Māori and Pākehā identity, the feminine rituals and passage of each of my Grandmothers, from early nineteenth century New Zealand to the present day. I am exploring the feminine, the vulnerable, the sorrowful, the hope and tragedy, through my mark making. And through my tonal gesture I am recognising that realm of potential, light and coming into being as significant to my tūpuna. This work replaces the conversations with my Grandmothers that I could never have.

52–53

Madeline Child Dunedin Block Paintings, Triptych 2020 Firewood, paint 650 x 1200 x 100mm

The guys at the firewood yard watch bemused as I spend quite some time picking out each individual piece of wood, and eventually have seven good ones. They say, ‘just have them.’

Marie Le Lievre Christchurch House (Slips) 2020 Oil on Canvas 1020 x 1020mm

Layering, merging, veiling and pouring transparent and opaque oil tints upon pale green surfaces on the studio floor is my primary method of artistic expression. It is used to convey the random and/or the real and unseen aspects of existence. Since completing my BFA Honours and MFA degrees from Canterbury University, I have been interested in using colour and paint processes to create deeply rich, organic looking abstract works that elicit emotional responses in the viewer, and that provide multiple connotations. Painting is not lecturing it is meditative, a source of soul journeying. Painting is for me a language of emotion.

54–55

Mary Duggan Whakatāne Lockdown 2020 Oil paint on canvas 510 x 400mm

Matt Arbuckle Auckland Track & Trace 2020 Acrylic on knitted polyester voile Framed in Aluminium 1220 x 920mm

I am a practising contemporary artist working across Australia and New Zealand. My artistic practice is a process-driven exploration of place, representing landscapes that are conceptualised through their very making. I am adventurous and experimental in my work, favouring process over outcome. I use elements of traditional Japanese shibori dyeing techniques to create abstract compositions by wrapping, twisting, folding and draping the fabric over found surfaces and structures. The resulting paintings use depth and movement to trace and reveal abstract memories, absorbing markings from the process and revealing a topographical landscape that imprints the experience of place into the artwork.

56–57

Melanie Mills Wellington Autumn still life with a bowl of fruit 2020 Oil on board 660 x 560mm

Melanie Mills Wellington Red Cloth 2020 Oil on Board 660 x 445mm

I am a self-taught artist and follow my instincts when painting, this gives me huge enjoyment and I hope this is seen in my works. My interests are in French, British and New Zealand modernism as well as the influence Japanese art had on European art, particularly at the end of the nineteenth and into the twentieth centuries. For me, these traditions capture the sheer pleasure of art, painting and still life in particular. Reflecting upon emotion in a painterly way, I look for the relationships between subjects and backgrounds, through colour, light and form.

Michael Greaves Dunedin Hawa Mahal 2020 Aerosol and oil on linen 275 x 380mm

Much of Michael’s work as a painter over the past twenty years has revolved around exploring what painting might be once it throws off the burden of representing reality in accordance with what and how we see. He has pushed this process of reflection and enquiry, largely omitting any suggestion of representation in his most recent works, and in using titles that are designed to trigger reflective speculation on the part of the viewer he makes works that swerve away from the object itself, and from the contextual relationship between the viewer and the viewed.

58–59

Moniek Schrijer Lower Hutt Benthos 2020 Rose quartz, pounamu, patina paint, and enamel paint on copper 210 x 297mm

Nicola Bennett Rotorua I Can’t Think of Anything I’d Rather Eat 2020 Oil and mixed media 200 x 300mm

My work is deeply connected to my love of food.

For me, food and art are so intricately linked, in their processes, shared pleasure and transformation. Mostly, I approach my work having been inspired by a cooking experience. I love the sensory pleasure of preparing ingredients and applying paint. I see colour like flavour, and I’m forever searching for the perfect balance. I’m drawn to transformation, whether that’s fresh ingredients into a meal to be shared or the transformation of tubes of paint and a canvas into a painting that may cause an emotional response.

My process is a playful search for beauty. I always know when a painting is finished; it is ready to eat with the eyes. A visual feast, if you will.

60–61

Nyree McInally Dunedin To The Garden Enclosed, My Daughter 2020 Painted ceramic 780 x 260mm

Inspired by the Ilkhanate tiles of Ancient Persia, the work is about confinement, particularly in regards to women who are often confined by pregnancy, childbirth and society's expectations. The crosses represent the church which has a long history of confining people. Sometimes this is chosen, for example in a nunnery, as a place of sanctuary.

The peculiar time of the imposed Covid 19 lockdown was very stressful, but for my daughter and many others it was also a chance to reflect, and enjoy spending time in nature and their gardens.

Owen Connors Auckland Adam of Light 2020 Egg tempera on board 350 x 300mm

Adam of Light, comes from a series of paintings in egg tempera that explore queer futurity and alternative approaches to progeny. I was drawn to working in egg tempera due to both its poetic relevancy to these themes and for its quality as a paint which allowed me to address and explore qualities of light, texture and pattern. The title, Adam of Light, comes from the gnostic text ‘On The Origin of the World’ which describes in detail gnostic cosmogony.

62–63

Rebecca Steedman Auckland The Weight of Things, Earth, Sky 2020 Canvas, wood-fired ceramics, hand-painted cord, cast silver screws 450 x 360 x 150mm

This body of research relates to a show at RM gallery in July 2020. The initial inspiration was geological, based on the significant changes taking place within the area surrounding RM gallery related in particular to the rail developments. These made visible unearthed rocks and minerals that referenced significant shifts within the earth’s crust over vast periods of time, which we can use to understand the historic and ongoing formation of our landscapes. This work has been significantly re-worked to exist as a new, solo stand-alone work The Weight of Things, Earth, Sky.

Rebecca Steedman Auckland Walking Drawings (Lockdown Edges) 2020 Watercolour drawings, wood-fired ceramics, bronze and silver shelf fittings 450 x 360 x 150mm

This is a book of watercolour drawings completed during level three and four lockdown restrictions in 2020. It explores the edges of where I was able to travel during this time in the area surrounding my Birkdale home, and Karangahape road, when we were able to return to work. The pages can be turned for the duration of the exhibition.

64–65

Reece King Auckland Above, Below 2020 Acrylic and enamel on canvas 1300 x 890mm

Rozana Lee Auckland Blooms and Ferns, 2020 2020 Melted wax, handdrawing, and tie-dye on silk, on pine wood frame with oil tinted varnish 1350 x 1180mm

Blooms and Ferns, 2020 draws together flower and fern motifs through the Indonesian Batik traditional tie-dye method. It signifies a pattern of home, grown from the ground of cultural diversity, marking my journey as an Indonesian Chinese immigrant settling in my adopted home country of Aotearoa New Zealand. The changes in the patterning and the end process created by leaving the beeswax on the fabric points to a temporality of the ‘in-betweenness’, marking cultural dynamism as a way forward.

66–67

Rozana Lee Auckland A Thousand Autumns, 2020 2020 Melted wax hand-drawing and fabric dye on silk, on pine wood frame with oil-tinted varnish 1350 x 1180mm

A Thousand Autumns, 2020 depicts a densely interwoven flowering pattern of my home country Indonesia. My chosen method of drawing uses a Tjanting, a traditional Batik pen-like tool for applying hot wax onto the fabric, which speaks about my cultural heritage. The changes of the end process by leaving the beeswax on the fabric points to a temporality of the ‘in-between’. This condition allows newness to come into the world, gesturing a way forward.

Sam Clague Wellington Die ich rief, die Geister (Those I called, the spirits) 2020 Oil on canvas 1000 x 700mm

Sam Clague is a New Zealand-born, Wellingtonbased artist. His practice spans painting, sculpture, installation, video, and sound, conjuring varied and seemingly unconnected cultural and artistic references into a scatterbrained yet compulsively poetic matrix of signs and symbols. In an essay for Art+Australia Online, Abbra Kotlarczyk writes: ‘Clague’s works are elisions in the true sense of the word: as aporia, an irresolvable internal contradiction that gets to the heart of what it means to both reject and join forces with our turbid desires.’

68–69

Simon Attwooll Wellington Ton tonton (turquoise) 2020 Acrylic and screen print on ACM panel in artist’s frame 430 x 315mm

Ton tonton (turquoise) is made from a 4x5 negative taken by an unknown photographer documenting what appears to be a Picasso painting found at a flea market in Paris. I am reflecting on how artworks read in the time they are created and how this reading can shift over time, memory distorting our perception of work physically while developing new meaning in a different context. Under current restrictions I'm considering the pros and cons of our isolation in making and showing work in New Zealand, but also how we relate to a global discussion in contemporary art.

Stephanie Postles Pukekohe Stand by me 2020 Stretched canvas, oil paint 900 x 1250mm

70–71

Te Pō Whakatāne Te Whitiānaunau 2020 Paper, pen, and ink drawing 297 x 420mm

Te Whitiānaunau is the expanse Hinetītama (Dawn) crossed in order to reach the dark. Te Whitiānaunau is the first drawing in a series of pen and ink drawings which collectively depict a journey from the light into the dark. The dark takes the form of a bushwalk which eventually returns us back into the light. The dark is a place one retreats to, as a sanctuary against the harshness of the light. The dark is a contemplative place; a healing space; an enveloping cloak of solitude and solace. The dark is complementary to and provides power to the light.

Telly Tuita Wellington Three Übermensch Of Tongpop 2020 Acrylic, pencil and pastel on cotton/nylon tupenu (sarong) 1470 x 1080mm

Three Übermensch of Tongpop cast Adam and Eve out of paradise. This painting was created out of frustration and fantasy. I easily escape to my fictional place and selfscribed aesthetic, Tongpop, to play and construct new versions of old stories set amongst a maximalist backdrop of ngatu patterns latticed, pastel bubbles, flying doves and colour, colour, colour. This sets the scene for my philosophical musings about culture, politics and religion. This was made during lockdown, so I had to improvise without canvas by decorating a favourite tupenu (lava-lava, sarong). Three heroic figures, familiar yet alien dominate the portrait.

Two naked figures exit stage left.

72–73

Telly Tuita Wellington I would tell people my birth mother was a hula dancer from Hawaii 2020 Acrylic, pencil, pastel, chalk and plastic hula skirt on recycled brown paper 1400 x 1080mm

Incomplete drawings and paintings are rolled up and stored away in my studio.This drawing is such an example, biographical in narrative and experimental in its making. Having turned 40 this year and married my husband, I have unfulfilled wishes of one day meeting my birth mother and seeing her face to face. Still a heavy topic. A sort of exorcism was necessary to release its heavy memory. When I was a boy, I would embellish my story, tell a fantasy version of the truth. A hula dancing mother was better than no mother.

Tessa Williams Upper Hutt I am of this land 2020 Wood, glass, brass, natural pigment 200 x 400 x 300mm

The use of ephemeral kōkōwai mounds in these works communicates the fragility of papatūānuku and wāhine alike. Yet, the imprint talks to their strength, being able to still hold and nurture in even the most fragile states.

74–75

Theodore Macdonald Auckland RADICAL DUDE [red hulk remix] 2020 Coloured pencil and graphite on wallpaper 540 x 1200mm

This drawing is a collage of Barts. They are extracted from many contexts, and haphazardly sliced together into convoluted patterns. I like the fullness of these pencils, the ebullient range of waxy tones. The intention is to create an all-over composition to be read from right-to-left, top-tobottom, corner-to-corner. The familiarity of the subject downplays attempts at interpretation and emphasises mark-making. This said, when I draw, I draw Bart. Although longevity has dulled his potency, bootleg Barts has long been a cipher for social movements invested in revolution, including ACT UP and Black Power.

Tira Walsh Auckland Franchise 2020 Mixed media on canvas 1000 x 800mm

As an indigenous artist, my experience of the city is of Papatūānuku under capitalism/urbanisation.

From this perspective, land and urban space can be understood as “a kahu, a fabric comprising a fabulous matrix of energies; rhythmical patterns of pure energy, woven together...” (Māori Marsden, 2003, p.xiii). This painting, and the current series, explores the rhythmical patterns of pure energy that comprise the life and evolution of Tāmaki Makaurau. It is my hope and aspiration for the work to weave together mine and my whānau’s lives with the speed and slownesses, colours, light and darkness, that animate the city as a complex living system.

76–77

Tori Beeche Auckland The Seeery 2020 Oil on Canvas 450 x 350mm

Tori Beeche Auckland We Need to Learn to Live More on the Stairs 2020 Oil on canvas 450 x 350mm

In the traditional Western genre of painting, where a room becomes a site for inquiry, my practice explores the creation of space as a relational dimension between human interaction and our understanding of the world around us. Utilising the basic compositional components of genre painting such as a window, a mirror or a doorway melded with decorative elements and pattern motifs, examines the influences we absorb, and how the spaces we occupy shape us.

Victoria Haldane Auckland Mangroves in Shadow 2020 Oil on Canvas 910 x 610mm

I have a day job in the city. My work world is very small in scope but demands my full attention and a lot of energy. I am also a terrible driver. Mostly because I'm so distracted by the clouds today, and long afternoon shadows. Nature’s grand display it's enormous and everywhere, but often missed. My artwork aims to capture observations of nature that flicker a moment of perspective and balance into my rat-race world. The works are local scenes, from around the corner and across the way, painted with exaggerated colour and deliberate brush marks.

78–79

Wesley John Fourie Dunedin Poems for ephemeral men 2020 Acrylic dye on cotton bedsheet with cotton and silk embroidery applique 1400 x 900mm

The first encounter with non-human surfaces is almost always cloth of some kind, first to wipe and wash up then to wrap us. It was with this in mind that I began creating this piece for the Molly Morpeth Canaday Award 2021. I was interested in exploring and documenting past relationships I have had by creating a tribute work to celebrate and mourn the men who have shaped my experience of love/lust. Over a period of 100+ hours, I embroidered poems I had written, song lyrics, and communications exchanged with respective lovers on this bed sheet that too has touched my body.

Yvonne Abercrombie Auckland Momentary Equilibrium 2020 Oil on canvas 750 x 650mm

Yvonne Abercrombie Auckland Ruminating 2020 Oil on canvas 900 x 800mm

The nature of oil paint is imperfect, its viscosity and mouldability render it challengeable. Yvonne Abercrombie uses this aesthetic to probe notions around the ‘ideal’ in the human condition. In painting where everything is conceivable, Yvonne discloses the fallibility of human nature through abstract figurative narratives. Her works, immanent of the female condition, are a reclaiming of identity in the pursuit of one’s self-contentment. Although there are hints of referencing traditions in figurative painting, Yvonne’s methods distract from its common use. Purposefully contending colour relationships, contradicting textures; the work has become void of literalism and imbued in vivacious content.

80–81

history of the award

The award began 34 years ago as the Shell Art Award in 1986. It was instigated

by Jacqui Hughes and Lynne Dawson of the Whakatāne District Community Arts Council (Arts Whakatāne) and then became the cornerstone event of a multidisciplined annual Summer Arts Festival for Whakatāne.

1991 - It was in 1991 that the Molly Morpeth Canaday Fund became the principal sponsor and the award became known as the Molly Morpeth Canaday Award painting and drawing, and held annually in conjunction with the Summer Arts Festival in Whakatāne.

2018 - The award alternates between presenting three-dimensional art form and painting and drawing. This year 2021, the award features painting and drawing art forms.

Molly Morpeth Canaday 1903 - 1971 Frank H. Canaday wanted to assist the arts in New Zealand, by the establishment of a series of funds. The Molly Morpeth Canaday Trust in Whakatāne is one of the few remaining. It benefits emerging artists nationwide in 2D and 3D work in two events: the Molly Morpeth Canaday Award 3D and the Molly Morpeth Canaday Award Painting and Drawing.

Why Whakatāne? When Frank was setting up the trust after Molly's death in 1971, he worked in contact with Rex Morpeth, (Molly's cousin), and a solicitor on the wording that would cover Frank's wishes for the trust document. Rex lived in Whakatāne.

82–83

exhibition opens

14february 2021

exhibition closes

4april 2021

info www. molly morpeth canaday. co. nz