New Award For Visual Artists

New Award For Visual Artists

Fulbright New Zealand launched a new award for New Zealand visual artists last week, in partnership with The James Wallace Arts Trust. The Fulbright-Wallace Arts Trust Award will allow an outstanding mid-career or senior New Zealand visual artist to undertake a three-month residency at Headlands Center for the Arts in Sausalito, California.

Applications for the new award will be made through the annual Wallace Art Awards, the longest running and largest annual awards for contemporary art in New Zealand.

The recipient will undertake a three month residency at Headlands Center for the Arts, which is located across the Golden Gate bridge from San Francisco, in the coastal wilderness of the Marin Headlands. The award will provide accommodation, a private art studio, meals and access to services, facilities and equipment at Headlands, as well as a monthly stipend, international travel costs and insurance cover.

Headlands is housed in a cluster of historic, early 1900s military buildings overlooking the entrance to San Francisco Bay, which were turned over to the National Park Service in 1972 and have been used to host visiting artists since 1985. Over 700 artists have held residencies at Headlands, where they are free to investigate, collaborate and experiment without commitment to a finished product.

The new, jointly-funded award compliments existing awards offered by both Fulbright New Zealand and The James Wallace Arts Trust. This year, Fulbright awards will support exchanges to the US by Wellington visual artist Kerry Ann Lee, Martinborough glass artists Jim Dennison and Leanne Williams, and Auckland filmmakers Toa Fraser and Briar March. Fulbright alumni include Julian Daspher, Laurence Aberhart, Manos Nathan and many other renowned New Zealand artists.

International exchange is also an important feature of the annual Wallace Art Awards, prizes for which also include residencies in New York, Vermont, and Solothurn, Switzerland. Winners of the Wallace Trust Paramount Award, who in the past have included Bill Hammond, Peter Stichbury and Judy Millar, undertake a six month residency at the International Studio and Curatorial Programme in New York.

Launching the new award at Rannoch in Auckland, esteemed New Zealand art collector and patron James Wallace said: “Our awards have evolved over the 18 years they have been in place, but the addition of the Fulbright-Wallace Arts Trust Award greatly adds to the status of the overall competition.”

Applications for the inaugural Fulbright-Wallace Arts Trust Award close on August 13th 2009. See www.fulbright.org.nz or www.wallaceartstrust.org.nz for details on how to apply.

ENDS

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