Latest news with #ClevelandNationalArtAwards
Otago Daily Times
24-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Otago Daily Times
The Sun, a pinhole, and a hefty price tag
Image: Ian Griffin Very keen-eyed visitors to the recent Cleveland National Art Awards show in Dunedin might have noticed a small, unassuming 4-by-5-inch photograph tucked away on a gallery wall — entry number 71. A smudgy image showing a figure-eight shape hovering above some blurry trees. Nothing much to look at, really. But perhaps curious, they flipped through the catalogue and promptly fell over when they saw the outrageous price. Let me explain. The image in question is an analemma, a picture showing the sun's position at the same time each day for a year. Due to Earth's tilted axis and its not-so-circular orbit, the sun doesn't return to the same spot in the sky each day — unless you count weekends, when it's always directly behind clouds. Instead, it traces a lovely elongated figure eight. To capture this celestial doodle, I mounted a pinhole camera in my office window. Every day at 12.30 in winter and 1.30 in summer (it's daylight saving's fault), a tiny dot of sunlight etched itself onto a glass photographic plate. For a whole year. No lens. No electronics. Just physics and patience. After 12 months, having carefully developed the precious image, I proudly entered what I believe to be the first ever complete southern hemisphere photographic analemma into a prestigious astronomy photography competition. It didn't even get selected for consideration — though a bloke who caught the Moon rising behind a lighthouse won third prize. Fair enough, it was a lovely lighthouse. So, I entered it in the Cleveland Art Awards. To my utter astonishment, it got in. Art judges apparently have better taste than astrophotography ones. Over several darkroom sessions (involving much muttering and chemical spills), I produced the final print. But there was a catch: just before entering, I realised that all entries had to be for sale. And I didn't want to sell it. Did I mention this image took an entire year of my life to create? Hence the outrageous price. Is this science or art? As Einstein said, "The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious". I say it's both. Though my camera was nudged before the year was up — so I'll have to start over. Such is the life of a pinhole perfectionist.
Otago Daily Times
28-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Otago Daily Times
Award-winning artwork a matter of chipping away at it
Alex Hodge reckons it would be a great story if his first award-winning artwork was inspired by a cricket ball flying through his kitchen window. Unfortunately, that is not the case. The 39-year-old Mosgiel artist has won the people's choice award at the Cleveland National Art Awards, with his artwork titled Fractured. It was created by painstakingly chipping away special glass with a hammer and chisel — a style of art inspired by Swiss contemporary visual artist Simon Berger. "It's a special type of glass that has two layers stuck together. "I lay it out flat on a table and then I just basically smash it up with a hammer and chisel, as much as I can into the portrait. "There's kind of little bits of glass everywhere and I have to wear safety glasses to cover my eyes. "And then once I'm finished, I'll flip the whole piece over so that it's got clean glass on the front and so it's not dangerous to touch or anything." The finished product, once it was framed, was remarkably stable. He said it took about two years to create this particular artwork, but it was not his first attempt. "It's taken this long to get to the point where I'm this good and so this is the first one that I've shown publicly. "But in my house, I have six or seven of these just kind of stored — ones that weren't as good, because obviously when you're cracking the glass, if you make one mistake, the whole piece has to be started all over again. "It's been a long process to get to the point where I can actually show it publicly." Mr Hodge said the portrait was not of anyone he knows. Rather, it was just a drawing of a person. He said he felt honoured to win the people's choice award in a prominent national art competition — especially since it was his first time showing in public. "It's really good to see recognition like this and proof that there's some value in me working on this and doing more." The self-taught artist is an industrial designer by trade. "It's entirely different to the design industry. With design, you spend months and months refining and perfecting something to be the absolute perfect version of what it can be. "And then this version of art that I'm doing, is kind of the opposite of that, which is why I'm quite enjoying it. "You only get one go at it. If you screw it up, you have to throw it out and start it again. "It's about embracing it when it's not perfect, and if I get a crack that's not where I want it to be, I have to kind of live with it and just go with it, and maybe the hair goes this way now since the crack is going that way. "Sometimes those imperfections are actually what gives it character." He said Fractured had been bought by an art collector and was now being sent to Australia. Exhibition co-ordinator Anne Baldock said more than 1000 votes for the people's choice award were lodged, and Mr Hodge's artwork received an overwhelming majority of them. The exhibition at the Dunedin Railway Station is now closed.
