Asia-Pacific Arts Awards 2000 Winners Announced

Nokia Announces New Zealand Winners Of Asia-Pacific Arts Awards 2000

New Zealand, 3 October 2000- Nokia this evening announced the five New Zealand winners of the Nokia Arts Awards-Asia Pacific 2000 at the Chiaroscuro Gallery in Auckland.

The inaugural Nokia Arts Awards – Asia Pacific was launched in 1999 across 12 markets in the Asia Pacific region with the theme, ‘Visions of Your Future”. This year the Arts Awards were extended to 14 markets across the Asia Pacific region with the theme, ‘Playground of your Imagination’. Entrants were required to use paint or a combination of paint and mixed media. Participants were required to be aged between 17 and 25.

The five winners are: Holly West with ‘You Can Have It All ***’; Ja-Young Lee with ‘Making A New World’; Shireen Perez with ‘Vistaview’; Stephanie Pyne with ‘Field Series’ and Chantelle Smith with ‘Make Up’. All five women are from Auckland.

Each of the five winners received $5000 cash from Nokia to further their arts education. They also received a trophy and a Nokia mobile phone.

This year’s judges, who were given the task of judging the works without any knowledge of who had done them or which secondary or tertiary educational institution the students were from, were; Justin Paton, Curator of Contemporary Art at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery; Pacific Island artist Ani O’Neill; Wellington artist Tony Lane; one of last year’s Arts Awards winners, Auckland artist Rona Osborne and Nokia’s New Zealand Country Manager, Pierre Middleton.

Mr. Middleton said, “There was an outstanding response to this year’s competition with an extremely high calibre of work. What Nokia has seen from this competition is the tremendous amount of talent among young artists that is out there in New Zealand. It is a privilege for Nokia to be able to help nurture that talent.”

Nokia’s Asia Pacific representatives were also present at the event. Ms Suguna Madhavan Director, Communications, Asia Pacific reinforced Nokia’s commitment to corporate governance. She said, “Nokia selected art as the focus of its corporate campaigns in the Asia Pacific region because, for Nokia contributing in a meaningful way to the lives of individuals and society over and above that of the business and technological realms is very important. Art underlines Nokia’s corporate mission of Connecting People. It transcends national, cultural, racial and age boundaries by connecting all in a shared language of beauty, inspiration and creativity”.

This evening’s five winners will represent New Zealand in the region-wide Arts Awards Finals where all top five winning entries from each of the participating markets in the Asia Pacific region will convene in January 2001 in Korea to compete for the top regional prizes.

***ENDS***

For further information or for transparencies of the winner’s works, please contact Sharon Hunter 021 379 207.

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