Winners named in IHC Telecom Art Awards

The 2010 IHC Telecom art awards winners from left: Dianne Hockridge, Vicki Dooley, Katie McMillan and Paul Griffiths.

EMBARGOED NOT FOR RELEASE BEFORE 7PM TUES 21 SEPTEMBER
Media release
21 September 2010

Winners named in IHC Telecom Art Awards

Kaikoura artist Dianne Hockridge has won the 2010 IHC Telecom Art Awards with an intricate pen and ink drawing Recipes (And Lots of Them).

Judges described Dianne’s artwork as intense, confident and elegant.

“This is an intense and amazing work,” says judge Otis Frizzell, an Auckland-based painter-printmaker. “There’s something new to see in it every time you look at it. It draws you in.”

Fellow judge Denise L’Estrange-Corbet, head of WORLD fashion house, says: “The intensity and concentration that has gone into Dianne’s work was exhaustive in the extreme. It is quite fantastic.”

Dianne, 61, is a fine-details person and the idea for the drawing took shape as she was looking through recipe books – and she started copying the recipes. Three months later, after a painstaking process of waiting for the ink to dry between each section of the work, she had created a picture from the words of her favourite recipes.

Dianne has been an artist for many years, working nearly every day from the Kaikoura IDEA Services day base in Kaikoura or from the Kaikoura Art Society’s rooms. She has been a finalist in the IHC Telecom Art Awards on three previous occasions.

Second place went to Paul Griffiths, 52, from Hamilton for an untitled, vividly coloured acrylic painting described by Saatchi Design Worldwide creative director Blake Enting as awesome. “There’s something about the raw emotional value of it. It’s just so beautifully layered and has strong intent,” he says. Paul, who works from the Sandz Gallery in Hamilton, has won $2000.

Third-equal prizes of $1000 were awarded to Katie McMillan, 23, with a series of five embroidered fabric tiki, titled Family Hei Tiki and Vicki Dooley, 48, of Lower Hutt with her felt-tip drawing Houses and Churches.

Judges say Katie has given a unique spin to the tiki motif and her tiki family was a ‘lovely marrying of European and Maori culture’.

Vicki impressed the judges with her colourful town ‘with the busy vibrancy of a South American city’ and bold blocks of colour. Judge Sue Upritchard, a Christchurch artist, says the work is well executed with a good sense of colour.

Vicki also won the Telecom People’s Choice Award for an Air New Zealand mystery weekend for two after her drawing was chosen by Telecom staff across the country.

The IHC Telecom Art Awards are the major showcase of the talents of people with intellectual disabilities. Every year artists who might struggle to communicate with words overwhelm the judges and the audience with their ability to communicate their ideas powerfully through their art. The awards are open to all New Zealanders with an intellectual disability. This year more than 500 people entered.

The top 30 entries were selected from regional competitions. The artists receive 100 percent of the sale price for their works.

The IHC Telecom Art Awards are part of Telecom’s sponsorship programme. Telecom has been a proud sponsor of the Art Awards since they started in 2004.

ENDS

© Scoop Media