Art Week is back and better than ever. Walking through the Link-turned-art-gallery, Ōtepoti students’ talent was on clear display. The OUSA-run Art Week competition had five sections: photography, illustration, sculpture, painting, and other, as well as a separate photography and poetry competition. Critic Te Ārohi sat down with some of the winners (those we could track down in a 24-hour window) to chat about their inspiration for their entries, and their artistic passions in general.
Randall X: Photography Section Winner
Formal Exercise
Mark Bridgmount: Sculptural Section Winner
Toga Party
Mark Bridgmount currently studies at the Polytech, completing his Level 6 Diploma in Art and Design, specialising in ceramics. Mark worked as an optometrist in South D, and when he retired 3 years ago he figured he’d better find something to do. He promptly took up ceramics.
This piece is part of a series of about 30 figures, all part of Mark’s exhibition project for his diploma, centering around “the typical Kiwi bloke”. The rest of Mark’s work can be seen on his Instagram (@markbridgmount), and his exhibit will be in Port Chalmers on the weekend of the 13th of November. Choosing which figure to enter was a no brainer: “the student, of course. Someone everyone’s going to relate to, and that's what my exhibition is all about.”
Mark has taken night classes over the years, ranging from metalwork, to painting, to stone carving, but ceramics was always the one that “really interested me the most, I got the most enjoyment out of it.” Mark wants to just see where his work takes him, and is undecided how much more he wants to study – hesitant about whether he wants to get deep back into the academic side of art and design.
Randall X: Illustration Section Winner
Schrodinger's Jesus
Maiya Hunter: Painting Section Winner
Good Sister, Bad Sister
Maiya is in her second year of a Bachelor of Visual Arts at the Polytech, specialising in painting. She saw this competition as an opportunity to share her work, and was “already feeling really good” because she’d had people reaching out to tell her they loved the piece. The win was totally unexpected, and Maiya is “very grateful for everyone that has said nice things about my work. It’s just… it’s awesome.”
The painting is based on a childhood photo of Maiya dressed as a zombie princess for a school disco. Maiya has always loved how this photograph captured how she felt as a kid, and this work is about “embracing that weird little girl inside of you.” The concept and title are also an homage to a Hole song and Courtney Love. Maiya added that she saw one of the other entries was entitled ‘Miss World’ – another Hole song. Shout out Marnie – your twin is over here.
Maiya is currently working on another assignment, an external exhibition with her fellow painters, so keep your eyes out in September for that. Maiya also dabbles in… everything else. She’s been working on collages recently, is a “naive hobbyist photographer”, and likes to crochet. While Maiya admits she has the typical artist dream of making a living off her work, she prefers to focus on just trying her best in the present, and seeing where that takes her.
Marnie Brosnahan – Other Section Winner
Whisper Through the Wire
Marnie painted this pair of jeans for her friend’s birthday, taking cues from the sneaker-art accounts she'd been scrolling through on Instagram. She reworked a black-and-white image of the Virgin Mary, threading it through a lattice of telephone wires and religious iconography across the front and back. Marnie explained that she "needed to get some paint onto this" after wanting to try her hand at painting on fabric for the first time, though she's since discovered that fabric paint bleeds far more than she expected. "I've told her, don't wear them in the rain," she laughs, "because I don't know what's going to happen."
Marnie's relationship with art started with acrylics in high school, and later grew into a stint drawing political cartoons for magazines under the pseudonym Florence Pollock. These days she splits her time between physical media and digital art on her iPad, though she admits art has taken a back seat since starting her BA in English, with a minor in Media, Film, and Creative Writing. "It feels like I only do art when I have no readings," she says. Even so, she carves out space for it where she can, sometimes painting alongside her friend over a glass of wine. "Everything digital is kind of hidden away in a room by yourself," she says, "but this is very much a collaborative kind of thing."
Jessica Finnie – Photo Competition Winner
Angels Alight
Jessica took this photograph on a trip to Punakaiki with her mum. She'd heard about the rock formations, but wasn’t at all expecting to see the white-fronted terns skimming the waves. Jessica explained that “watching [the terns] flurry across the water was so captivating, I wanted to capture their essence,” and she managed it through a slow shutter speed to blur their motion into the waves. Jessica has always loved nature, and moving from Arizona all the way to New Zealand for University has opened a whole new world of wildlife to her.
Jessica’s passion for photography goes back to her childhood, when her mum would lend her a camera for summer camps. This sharpened into something more serious in high school, and now photography competes with the ever challenging first year health science. While she admits this balance isn’t easy, it's precisely that difficulty that makes her passion matter more. “It's my break from the sciences,” she says.
