The Graduate Art Awards
Glaister Ennor Graduate Art Awards
Source: NBR online (John Daly-Peoples | WEEKEND REVIEW)
This week I judged the Glaister Ennor Arts Awards which are open to Masters students enrolled at the tertiary art institutions in Auckland. Eleven works were selected from the art schools.
There was a very high level of consistency in terms of technique and the ideas, which showed a high degree of sophisticated thinking, study and application.
The winner of the Barfoot and Thompson Award was Tracey Porteous from the Whitecliffe College of Art and Design for her photograph Kaipara 7008.
I said of the work that I was impressed by the way in which it confused and tantalized and that for a photographic is appeared to be more abstract than real.
The title suggested a landscape but what component of landscape – land, sea, underwater, sky or mist was ambiguous.
The veils of colour are suggestive of something like an aurora australis or even waves of wispy human hair.
What the photographer provides is a sense of mystery in terms of both the subject matter and the technical accomplishment.
There is a sense of waking as from a dream or the sudden exposure to a dramatic event.
As with many photographers there is an interest not so much in subject matter, but, like the Impression painters an interest in colour and light.