Amy Pyle, Living the View, 2009
Winners announced for the 2009 New Zealand Student Craft/Design Award, sponsored by Friends of The Dowse.
Wellington design students once again dominated the New Zealand Student Craft Design Award.
Confirming Wellington’s status as a national hotbed of creative talent, design students from Wellington’s Massey and Victoria Universities followed up the 2008 clean sweep of awards by again taking out all of the awards at the The Dowse Art Museum Friends sponsored 2009 NZ Student Craft/Design Awards.
Massey University Graduate, Amy Pyle’s entry Living the View has been selected as the 2009 winner of the NZ Student Craft/Design Award, and takes the winner’s cheque of $3,000.00. Amy’s entry was a series of bach inspired textiles that had evolved from her visits to seaside communities. Awards judge Gina Jones described the work ‘as a series of wonderful drawings whose translation to a fabric work had been well executed, with content that evoked memories of an idyllic New Zealand’.
The retrospective theme was also followed by the joint runner-up recipients. Victoria University student, Juliette Wanty produced an innovative interpretation of a classically designed hall table that incorporated a moulded drawn back table cloth as part of the table form. Gina Jones viewed the entry Table Cloth as being ‘imaginatively conceived and exquisitely realised’.
Fellow runner up recipient, Zac Robinson is a current Massey student who created a twin-set of furniture pieces titled the HARPER Duo. The entry was created in homage to musicians Ben Harper and Jack Johnson who jointly own a bach in Raglan. Gina Jones commented that the furniture ‘plays with the notion of friendship and interprets life in the Harper/Johnson bach, by creating furniture with a function and form that is a perceived ideal fit’.
The NZ Student Craft/Design Awards was judged by Artist Raewyn Atkinson, Architect/Artist Gina Jones, The Dowse Art Museum’s Claire Regnault, and Art Patron Ross Steele. The winning works will be on display at The Dowse Art Museum following a presentation function on 21 October 2009.