Canterbury-based jeweller Areta Wilkinson has just scooped TheNewDowse’s fifth Gold Award with an outstanding design for a botanical brooch. The design is inspired by the black beech or tawai tree – a tree that in the summer months suffers from an infestation of thick black fungi that drips liquid honeydew, much to the delight of local birds and insects.
Wilkinson says, "Like the gold pingao woven into kete my jewellery practice is embedded in traditions of crafting and storytelling, interlacing Maori narrative and European goldsmithing. TheNewDowse Gold Award is an opportunity to make a piece I've imagined for a while - a simple sprig of black beech made from oxidised 18 ct yellow gold. Black beech and honeydew, sweet-smelling and sticky in summer… a memento from our Tawera foothills in North Canterbury. The high carat will render it exquisite and extraordinary - I can't wait!"
Supported by the Dowse Foundation and valued at $10,000, TheNewDowse Gold Award provides the winner with a glittering prize package of $6000 worth of gold and $4000 in cash. The winning design will be destined for TheNewDowse collection where it will sit alongside outstanding works by previous Gold Award winners Pauline Bern, Joanna Campbell, Kirsten Haydon and Lynn Kelly. All five works will be displayed together for the first time in September 2009.
In search of a design that demonstrated an understanding of the properties and potential of gold in the fullest sense, both technically and thematically, the judges - Justine Olsen, Caryl McKirdy, and Claire Regnault - selected Wilkinson’s piece from 16 other entries.
Caryl McKirdy says “Areta Wilkinson's botanic series demonstrate a fine aesthetic sensibility with a strong connection to place. Black Beech and Honeydew promises to be a potent use of the properties of gold with its syrupy colour emerging out of the sootiness of the oxidised metal. We are confident the finished piece will be an exciting addition to the Gold Award collection.”
Botanical specimens, as collected during Cook’s voyages to New Zealand by Joseph Banks and Sydney Parkinson, have formed the basis of a number of Wilkinson’s jewellery investigations since the late 1990s. Her keen observation of the seasonal changes of New Zealand native plants informs her work.
For more information and images, and to request an interview with Areta Wilkinson or TheNewDowse Concept Developer Claire Regnault, please contact: Michael Steele
E michael.steele@huttcity.govt.nz or T +64 4 560 1482.
NOTES FOR EDITORS
Areta Wilkinson (b. 1969) is of Kai Tahu descent. She studied jewellery design at UNITEC in Auckland from 1988 to 1991 under tutorage of Pauline Bern, the inaugural winner of the Gold Award, and graduated in 1991. Following her graduation from UNITEC, Areta Wilkinson has worked as a jeweller and lecturer. She has exhibited extensively throughout New Zealand, and is represented in major collections both in New Zealand and the United Kingdom, including the Pitt Rivers Museum and Cambridge University. In 2008, Wilkinson left Auckland to settle in Oxford, Canterbury. She is currently undertaking a Masters in Visual Arts through Massey University.
ENDS