Apart from the prize itself, winning in the Friends of Pātaka Art Awards has given a real boost to the careers of Porirua artists, giving them:
- recognition and encouragement to keep working;
- inspiration to develop in a new direction;
- encouragement to show their works elsewhere, and
- confidence to enter other awards including our awards again.
These brief profiles of just a few of our past winners highlight their achievements since winning.
Emma Hercus
Since winning the 2019 Art Awards’ Creativity and Promise Scholarship, a six-month level four certificate programme at The Learning Connexion, with her work Demise of the Huia, multimedia artist Emma Hercus has continued to develop her practice in new directions. In 2022, she won the prestigious $20,000 New Zealand Contemporary Art Award for Red Handed, a work she developed while at The Learning Connexion – see Friends’ article here. See also her artist profile posted in 2020 by The Learning Conmnection.
In June 2024, she had a sellout solo exhibition of paintings, Kindred, at Twentysix Gallery, in Newtown, Wellington. Emma’s entry in Friends of Pātaka Art Awards 2024 won the Open Award. See her winners profile for more about Emma’s journey and art practice.
Follow Emma on Instagram @emmahercusart
Clare Matthews
After experimenting with various styles and media for more than 20 years, Clare Matthews won the 2018 Friends of Pātaka Open Award with ‘Birdland’. Then, inspired to take a course on creativity in art practice, she completely changed her work to an abstract style, with layers, colour and texture to capture landscape, weather, light. Entering again in the 2022 Awards her work ‘Shower’, in this new completely different style, won the Creativity and Promise Award.
We interviewed Clare in 2022 about her evolving art practice. By then she had become a committed full-time painter and continues to exhibit and sell her work across Aotearoa – including having a stall in the Pātaka hub of 2023’s Porirua Arts Trail.
Follow Clare at www.clarematthews.co.nz ’
Christina Little
Photographer Christina Little won the Open Award in 2017. Since then, she has had a number of solo exhibitions and has been short-listed twice in the Waikato Museum National Contemporary Art Awards: in 2019, and again in 2022 with the work: ‘Pastness & Futureness’, a photographic diptych of the Titahi Bay fossil forest in situ. She has become well-known for her colourful short series photographs of local water bodies.
Follow Christina at https://www.christinalittle.co.nz/about
Alicja Gear
Alicja Gear’s painting ‘Promise of Rain’ was the Viewers’ Choice in 2017. The following year, she won the Jane Hyder Painting Award with ‘Kaitiaki 2’. Alicja paints expressive abstract landscapes in oils, responding to the sense of atmosphere and the play of light across the landscape. Exhibitions Gallery of Fine Art in Wellington now represent her work, and in 2023 she opened her Pukerua Bay studio for the Porirua Arts Trail.
Follow Alicja at www.alicjagear.com
Moses Viliamu
New Zealand-born Tokelau/Samoa artist Moses Viliamu won the 2020 Open Award with his work ‘350 Pacific’. He continues to develop his multimedia practice with icons and motifs reflecting contemporary NZ Pacific heritage. Moses opened his studio at Whitireia for the Porirua Arts Trail 2023, and showed at the Tokelau Art Exhibition, Te Auaha, 2024, with Jack Kirifi, showing what it means to be proud Tokelau NZ artists.
Moses was one of the 85-member Aotearoa delegation selected to attend the Festival of Pacific Arts (FestPAC) in Hawaii in June 2024.
Follow Moses at www.mosesviliamu.com