Awards made to help creative projects

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32537, 22 February 1971, Page 12

Awards made to help creative projects

(N.Z. Frets Association!

WELLINGTON, Feb. 21. A young Wellington film-maker, Geoffrey Murphy, who is making a halfhour drama “The Tank Busters,” with a group known as the Acme Sausage Company, is among five artists granted awards under the Queen Elizabeth creative projects scheme. Murphy has been involved professionally in film-making for the last two years. The council grant of $960 will enable I. Im to meet laboratory costs to take the film up to release print stage. Other awards have been made to a Wellington painter, Brent Wong, to Peter Yeates, an Auckland potter, Ann Westra, a Wellington photographer, and a New Plymouth sculptor, Don Driver. Wong, who was placed in the Benson and Hedges competition in 1970, has been granted $lOOO to help enable him work at full-time painting this year. Yeates will receive $lOOO to help his project of producing large-scale ceramics with architectural application. A grant of $5OO to Miss Westra will help her with a photographic essay on contemporary New Zealand life. A free-lance photographer, she intends to produce a comprehensive visual study depicting a personal response to New Zealand people and their environment.

Driver will receive $4OO, which will enable him to complete a pilot project of one large sculpture. He has

held several exhibitions in New Zealand and Australia and is moving towards big sculpture suitable for public buildings and public areas.