Prize Paintings At Two Galleries

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32306, 26 May 1970, Page 13

Prize Paintings At Two Galleries

Two selections of paintings from the Manawatu Art Competition are on display at present in the two main Christchurch art galleries. The Canterbury Society of Arts gallery has 33 paintings selected from this year’s competition; and the Robert McDougall Art Gallery is showing a collection entitled “Profile of a Prize.” featuring prize-winning works from the competition in the previous five years.

The Manawatu Prize was New Zealand's only annual prize for contemporary painting when it was established in 1965.

It is organised by the Manawatu Society of Arts and the Palmerston North Art Gallery, and now carries a cash prize of $5OO for the winning painting. Each year an independent judge is invited to make the award, and the winning paintting becomes the property of the Palmerston North gallery.

The competition organisers impose no restrictions on subject matter or materials used (although the paintings entered are not usually more than 24 sq. ft, in area), and the competition is open to any artist who has lived in New Zealand for 12 months before the closing date for entries. The competition has consistently drawn entries from leading New Zealand artists, and first or second award winners have included Toss Woollaston, Pat Hanly, Milan McKusich and Gordon Walters. This year, the winner was Ray Thorburn, a lecturer in art at the Palmerston North Teachers’ College. Mr Thorburn, who was born in 1937 and graduated from the Elam School of Art, Auckland, with honours, is not known to Christchurch gallery-goers, although he has had two one-man shows in Auckland and one in Australia. He describes his prizewinning painting as a “modular” work. Of it he says:

“Painting has always been designed to hang one way, therefore the spectator’s reaction to the image is determined from one viewpoint. I believe that in addition to the emotional and intellectual responses to painting there should be a physical response. As in marriage, without this relationship the union is not complete. “By breaking away from the traditional concept of one painting hung one way, I believe I am changing the role of the viewer from being a passive spectator, who reads a painting from a distance, to one which provides him with the opportunity to become more involved with the painting by giving him a part to play in the creation of the image. Like a child with its

'blocks, he can adjust the , units to suit himself. This I believe can bring immense satisfaction to a person, for he can physically as well as intellectually identify with the painting. “Because most paintings are so reliant on total unity of composition, they will visually ‘collapse’ if they are hung in any way other than the way they were designed. With modular paintings, parts can be removed and the remaining units will still work as a complete painting or paintings, for there is no ‘whole’ in the accepted sense, but a series of parts. “For me the modular, concept has such an exciting potential that I feel it introduces a new dimension in painting, based on the simple principle of enjoyment through being able to take part in creating one’s own image by re-orientating a series of parts.”

The C.S.A. exhibition will be open until June 3, and the McDougall show to June 19.