2017 saw Andrea du Chatenier, a Fine Arts Lecturer on the Bachelor of Design & Arts at UCOL Whanganui and a successful artist who has been exhibiting here and abroad for more than a decade, awarded with the Guldagergaard Residency, for her work Untitled (Yellow Stack).
Before leaving for Denmark Andrea received news of being the recipient of another award - the
Wallace Arts Trust Vermont Award for her work Untitled (Celestial Blue Cave Drawing). The judges said her porcelain and earthenware piece was ‘a little bit magic, fragile and gutsy all at once.’
This award will see Andrea take up another residency – this time three-months at the Vermont Studio Centre in the USA. This prestigious set of awards has $275,000 in prizes available and are for New Zealand Artists in contemporary painting, sculpture and photography, they were started in 1992 by Sir James Wallace, whose aim was to foster, honour and support the practise of visual arts.
Andrea has now just returned to New Zealand from the Guldagergaard International Ceramic Research Centre in Denmark, where she was undertaking an artist residency.
On her return she was notified that she has won another award, this time the Merit Award in the
2018 Portage Ceramic Awards. The awards were presented by this year’s guest judge, Los Angeles artist Bari Ziperstein, she says this of Andrea’s work “dripping visceral worlds use a combination of armatures and pattern with her delicately controlled failures – they show me an undertone of sculptural rigor.”
In describing her latest work, Celestial Forest, Andrea says, “I’ve been thinking about scholars’ rocks, the Chinese tradition of selecting rocks that mimic aspects of the natural world and operate as objects of contemplation. My current series offers a contemporary version of these rocks, which present a world in a state of flux, unstable and full of contradictions; much less Mother Nature, much more psychedelic disco.”
Andrea and the other 2018 Portage Ceramic Awards winners and finalists work will be on display at
Te Uru in Titirangi from 9 November 2018 - 10 February 2019.
With so many recent achievements we asked Andrea to reflect on her art and the opportunities these awards and residencies give her “Ideas, lots of new and exciting ideas. These experiences allow me to see what the latest in ceramic techniques are and then I can explore them for myself through my art”.
Image of Celestial Forest featured above is by Haruhiko Sameshima, courtesy of Te Uru.
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