The Parkin Drawing Prize 2017 Winner has been announced

The Parkin Drawing Prize 2017 Winner has been announced.

Kirsty Lillico from Wellington has been announced the winner of the 2017 Parkin Drawing Prize and a $20,000 cash prize – sponsored by Chris Parkin, arts patron and philanthropist.

Kirsty’s work State Block measuring 3.7 metres x 4.7 metres, was chosen as the winner from an impressive 502 entries nationwide and 84 finalists at the New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts on Monday 1 August.

Reflecting on the winning artwork, Seraphine Pick, the judge for this year’s prize said:
“Kirsty Lillicos’s work State Block is challenging, brave and impressive. Her use of salvaged carpet for surface material to draw into it with a knife a blueprint plan of a 1940’s modernist high-density concrete block of flats, then presenting it by hanging and draping it from floor to ceiling and transforming the blue print into a three dimensional drawing in space as a floppy, soft and bodily object - quite the opposite to the hard-edged concrete Brutalism style building the plan was designed for people to live in.

Her work appears to question high-density social housing and its liveability, inequality, affordability and the failure by privatization to solve the current state housing crisis balanced with her interest in the post–depression era of International Brutalism style of modern Architecture and its aesthetics.”

Seraphine Pick also awarded 10 highly commended prizes worth $500.00 each. The recipients include Karyn Taylor - Arc on 3 States (Auckland); Harry McAlpine - The Tyranny of Good Intentions, James Thomson-Bache - The Activity (Dunedin), Michael Dell -Valley/Forest (Nelson), Rohan Wealleans – Skyclad (Wellington), Kristy Gorman –Lacuna III (Auckland), Clara Wells- Parramatta Automatic(Christchurch), Jae Kang – 4,000 Stains of Breath (Auckland), James Robinson – Gnosis (Dunedin) and Hugo Koha Lindsay - Forensic Cue 1 (Auckland).

To view the merit award winner's works, please click here.

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