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Philippa Bentley's Award-winning Diorama: Extinct Birds of the New Zealand Bush |
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The Arrowtown Gallery congratulates one of their most popular artists, Philippa Bentley, on receiving a Merit Award in the 2010 New Zealand Painting and Printmaking Awards. Hosted by the Waikato Society of Arts, the NZPPA reception was held on Friday 19th February.
The NZPPA was established ten years ago and offers New Zealand artists national recognition and monetary prizes courtesy of the Awards' principal sponsor, the Philip Vela Family Trust.
Philippa submitted a work which looked at the diorama and at birds from former New Zealand banknotes: the New Zealand Wood Pigeon (from the old $20 note) and the Fantail (from the old $1 note). As Philippa says, "that these notes are no longer in current usage renders the birds 'extinct'." The work was inspired by old dioramas of taxidermy birds and her memories of display cabinets she saw as a child in the classroom and at the Auckland Museum.
After screenprinting the birds onto corrugated cardboard, a material "reminiscent of the shoe box dioramas for school projects", she painted the surrounding flowers and foilage. Philippa says: "That it is so obviously 'constructed' is also a reference to the colonial practice of posing birds in display cabinets or glass domes."
The judge at this year's NZPPA was Dr Lesley Duxbury, a practising artist and Associate Professor at the School of Art at RMIT University, Melbourne. The NZPPA marks the opening of the Hamilton Gardens Summer Festival, and all works entered will hang for the Festival's duration at the Hamilton Gardens Pavilion.
View the following link for more information on the NZPPA: http://www.wsa.org.nz/awards.aspx
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