2021 Molly Morpeth Canday Award - Painting and Drawing

2021 Appointed Guest Judge - Karl Chitham

Karl Chitham (Ngā Puhi, Te Uriroroi) is the Director of The Dowse Art Museum and was previously the Director and Curator of the Tauranga Art Gallery  - Toi Tauranga. He has also held curatorial roles at Rotorua Museum Te Whare Taonga o Te Arawa, University of Waikato, Whakatāne Library and Exhibitions Centre - Te Kōputu a te whanga a Toi and Objectspace.

He has a Master's Degree in Sculpture from Elam School of Fine Arts, Auckland University and has been involved in  the arts in New Zealand in a variety of roles for over 15 years. Chitham has been involved in  number of awards most recently as a judge of the Wairarapa Art review and the 2019 Occam New Zealand Book Awards. He was also a judged the Taranaki National Art Awards, the Wanganui  Review and the National Youth Arts Awards. He has been a selector of the Headlands Sculpture of the Gulf, Waiheke and was on the section panel for the New Zealand Pavilion at the Venice Biennale for 2021.

2021 Pre selection judge - Francis McWhannell

Francis McWhannell is a writer and exhibition maker from Aotearoa New Zealand, currently based in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland. He holds a Bachelors of Arts (Honors) in Museums and Cultural Heritage from the University of Auckland Te Whare Wānanga o Tāmaki Makaurau, where he recently completed his Masters of Art History. In October 2019, he was appointed the curator of the Fletcher Trust Collections, a major provate collection of Aotearoa art founded in 1962. He is a passionate advocate for the arts in general and for early-career artists from Aotearoa in particular. He was a judge of the Aspiring Art Prize in 2019 and the Eden Arts Art School Award in 2019 and 2020.

Francis has written for Various arts and culture magazines and websites, including Art Collector9 Australia), Art New Zealand, Art News  New Zealand, Index, and The Spinoff. He contributes regularly to The Photograph Punch, where he was Visual Arts Editor form 2016 - 2017.

2021 Pre selection Judge - Hanahiva Rose

Hanahiva is s an assistant Curator of the contemporary Art and Collections at the Govett Brewster in New Plymouth.
Previously Hanahiva has worked as an adviser at Manatū Taonga Ministry for Culture and Heritage, as a research assistant at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, and as a research assistant and curatorial intern on the Oceania at the Royal Academy of Arts, London. Hanahiva is regularly published nationally for her writing on Māori and Pacific art practices in Aotearoa.

2021 Pre selection Judge - Natasha Matila- Smith

Natasha Matila- Smith (Ngā Kahungunu, Ngāti Hine, Samoan) arts practitioner in Tāmaki Makaurau, Aotearoa. She graduated from the University of Auckland with a Masters of Fine Arts degree in 2014. Natasha's practice interrogates ideas of singularity and reflects fixes identity. She often approaches heavy themes with satire, with her recent works dealing with social anxieties through combining contemporary culture with digital landscape. Recent exhibitions include The Cold Islanders, Waikato Museum, 2019 and you're my number 1, Firstdraft , Sydney 2017. As a writer, she has contributed to numerous online ans print publications which include Runway Australian Experimental Art, Matter Aotearoa Auckland and Art New Zealand.

 Image credit: John McIver, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o  Tāmaki.

Past Judges

Ruth Watson - 2020 Guest Judge

Ruth Watson is a multi-disciplinary artist who has worked in sculpture, video installation, photography and painting for several decades, in New Zealand and abroad. Her outdoor sculpture of four globes, titled Other Worlds, has been on display outside Te Papa for the Wellington Sculpture Trust 4 Plinths project and was the 2015 Fulbright-Wallace Arts Trust Award recipient. She is a Senior Lecturer at the Elam School of Fine Arts in Auckland.


Deborah Rundle - 2020 Pre selection judge
In 2018 Deborah was the inaugural holder of the British School at Rome / Wallace Arts Trust Residency. Also in 2018, she won the Molly Morpeth Canaday 3D award with Employee of the Month. Deborah is based in Tāmaki Makaurau. Principally utilising text, she investigates the ways in which power plays out in the social and political domain in order to muse on possibilities for change.

Virginia Leonard - 2020 Pre selection Judge 
Virginia Leonard’s work has been exhibited extensively. In 2017 she was the recipient of an international ceramic residency at Guldagergaard, Denmark. Featured in 100 Sculptures of Tomorrow published by Thames and Hudson, London and is represented in NZ, Sydney, Miami and Geneva.

Jamie Boynton - 2020 Pre selection Judge
Jamie is a Contemporary Maori Artist based in his indigenous homeland of Mataatua in the Eastern Bay of Plenty.  Known for his attention to detail and fine application of tools and technology, his practice draws on metaphors from Maori culture woven into a broader cultural context. His artistic style reflects his desire to use art as a vehicle to influence positive social change. His most recent exhibition is an interactive 3-D Light Installation; 'Whareatua - Field of Dreams', which featured at last years I-Light Festival in Singapore.

Dr Christopher McAuliffe - 2019 Guest Judge
Dr Chris McAuliffe is Professor of Art (Practice-led research) at the School of Art and Design, Australian National University. From 2000–2013 he was Director of the Ian Potter Museum of Art, the University of Melbourne. He taught art history at the University of Melbourne (1988-2000) and was Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser Visiting Professor of Australian Studies at Harvard University (2011–12).

Ane Tonga - 2019 Pre selection Judge
Ane Tonga is an artist, curator and writer based in Auckland. Ane has undertaken curatorial roles at Dowse Art Museum, Te Papa Tongarewa Museum of New Zealand and was formerly the Lead Curator at Rotorua Museum Te Whare Taonga o Te
Arawa.

Andrew McLeod  - 2019 Pre selection Judge
Studied at Elam School of Fine Art, NICAI, Auckland University, and graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1998. Andrew was the recipient of an Arts Foundation Award for Patronage from Gus & Irene Fisher in 2010.

Kirstin Carlin - 2019 Pre selection Judge
Kirstin Carlin has received much recognition for her work, including being the winner of the 2017 Molly Morpeth Canaday Major Award. Carlin’s work is held in major public and private collections including: the James Wallace Arts Trust Collection.

2018 Guest Judge 3D
Deborah Crowe, Auckland

Deborah Crowe is a highly-regarded artist, academic and art professional whose practice, teaching and contribution of over twenty five years to the fields of art, craft and design has involved exhibiting in Aotearoa New Zealand and representation in international conferences and exhibitions. Crowe constructs objects, installations and complex imagery, often challenging her audience to keep up. Her work is held in collections including Te Papa Tongarewa, Glasgow School of Art and the Dowse Art Museum. Deborah Crowe is an ART Venture Creative Entrepreneur Award recipient, Founder of Crowe Creative Art Services and a Trustee on the Board of Objectspace. 
Deborah Crowe completed her degree and postgraduate study at Glasgow School of Art in 1986, after which she relocated to Aotearoa New Zealand.

2018 Pre-selection Judge 3D
Scott Eady, Dunedin

Scott Eady is a maker of objects that interrogate and confound the nature and value of objects, with recent work taking on a greater participatory dimension. Exhibitions and projects include; The Philanthropist’s Stone, a permanent public sculpture on Cuba Street Wellington; Good Morning Vladivostok, (Artetage Museum of Modern Art Vladivostok, Russia 2016); IVAN, (Personal Structures, Palazzo Bembo, La Biennale Venezia 2013) and 100 Bikes Project: Gwangju, (The 9th Gwangju Biennale 2012); 100 Bikes Project: Part 1 (The Dowse Art Museum, Lower Hutt, 2011). Eady is currently based in Dunedin, New Zealand and is Senior Lecturer of Sculpture at the Dunedin School of Art at Otago Polytechnic. His work is represented in public and private collections throughout New Zealand, Australia and Russia.

2018 Pre-selection Judge 3D
Jasmine Te Hira, Auckland

Jasmine Te Hira is an artist currently working in the museum + gallery sector in Tāmaki Makaurau. Jasmine's practice considers the way in which taonga traces skin often embodying indigenous knowledges while traversing institutional critique and spaces. In 2016 Jasmine received a Creative New Zealand Pasifika Internship continuing to work as the Kaiāwhina ki Te Uri for Gottfried Lindauer: The Māori Portraits 2017 exhibition at Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki. Jasmine's current work at Tautai Contemporary Pacific Arts Trust sees her establishing a community research archive. Her work is exhibited nationally and internationally with The Beauty of Invisible Grief being the joint major winner of the 2016 Molly Morpeth Canaday 3D Awards.
 

2017 Guest Judge painting and drawing
Felicity Milburn, Christchurch

Felicity Milburn is a Curator at Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetu, where she works with artists on a wide range of projects, from temporary installations through to large-scale survey exhibitions, and Art Editor for the literary magazine, Takahē.
Most recently, Milburn curated exhibitions of historical and contemporary art from the collection and beyond for the Gallery's reopening. She writes regularly about art for local and international publications and is the art editor for the literary magazine, Takahē. This year, Milburn has worked with Billy Apple and Lisa Walker on solo individual projects, and prepared an exhibition on the paintings of Doris Lusk.

2017 Pre-selection Judges painting and drawing

Hugo Lindsay, Auckland (left)
Lindsay holds a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Auckland, and has acquired numerous awards and notable recognition including the prestigious Kaipara Wallace Arts Trust Award (2015). His first major award was the Francis Erwin Hunt Scholarship (2011), followed by the Walker and Hall, Zinni Douglas Merit Award (2014), Parkin Drawing Prize (2015), and the Molly Morpeth Canaday: Painting and Drawing Award (2016).

Hamish Pettengell, Whakatāne (right)
Museum and Arts Curator 2017

2016 Judge 3D
Kim Paton, Auckland

Kim Paton is the newly appointed Director of Objectspace, Auckland. She comes to the position from an academic role as Research Leader at Wintec's School of Media Arts and curator and editor for RAMP. She is a member of the curatorial panel for Urban Dream Brokerage, Wellington and Mesh Sculpture, Hamilton. Kim holds a first class honours degree in Sculpture from Massey University in Wellington and a postgraduate diploma in Management from Waikato University.

2016 Judge painting and drawing
Richard Fahey, Auckland

Richard Fahey is a senior lecturer at the Department of Design and Visual Arts at Unitec, Auckland, where he has taught since 1992. Richard graduated with a BFA in Painting, Sociology and Art Education from the University of Canterbury in 1987, and an MFA in Painting from RMIT, Melbourne in 2000. Richard has advised the Ministry of Education and the NZ Qualifications Authority on Visual Arts content. He is a past judge of the Wallace Trust Art Award, Waiheke Art Award and Molly Morpeth Canaday Award - Painting and Drawing. Richard has produced a number of curated exhibitions related to his interest in ceremics:
Clay Economies (Objectspace, 2008); Richard Parker: Master of Craft ( Objectspace, 2010); and Peter Hawkesby (Gus Fisher Gallery, 2011).

2015 Judge painting and drawing
Matthew Browne, Auckland

Matthew Browne is an artist working within the visual arts, specialising in the traditions of painting and sculpture.
He studied at Camberwell College of Arts in London, gaining a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in Painting in 1982. Further studies in New Zealand at Elam School of Fine Arts, University of Auckland, led to a Master of Fine Arts (Honours) in 2000.
​Matthew has exhibited his work widely throughout New Zealand and the UK. His work is represented in private collections in New Zealand, UK, Australia, Denmark, Singapore, Canada and the USA. Public collections include the Parliamentary Collection, Wellington, The Royal Overseas League, London, and The James Wallace Charitable Arts Trust, Auckland.
​Matthew Browne began his teaching career in 1988 when he was invited to teach painting, colour theory and practice, at Chelsea College of Art & Design, London.

2014 Judge painting and drawing
Dr Victoria Edwards, Christchurch

Dr Victoria Edwards has been involved in art education since the 1970s and is currently a full time practitioner living in Christchurch. She works primarily in new media including drawing and photography. She has engaged in collaborative practice for a number of years. Her art practice explores role-play and social conventions in relation to individual and collective identity.
One of her professional highlights was the role of Academic Director, Design and Arts College, Christchurch. More recently she has been a member of the External Reference Group to monotor the Learning Experience Outside The Classroom (LEOTC): a Ministry of Education initiative in collaboration with the Centre of Contemporary Arts, The Art Zone. Edwards works are found in many national and international collections.

2013 Judge painting and drawing
Melvin Day (Deceased), Wellington

Melvin Day is among New Zealand's leading senior painters. He first attended Elam School of Art as an 11-year-old and following study was drafted into the Army for War Service. In 1963, he was the first New Zealander accepted into the prestigious Courtauld Institute of Art in London. He taught at various London Art Schools until 1968 when he was appointed the Director of the National Art Gallery of New Zealand (now the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa) and returned to New Zealand. In 1978 he was appointed Government Art Historian, a post held until his retirement.
Melvin Day's works are found in many national and international public and private collections.
In 2003, Day was awarded the CNZM for his services to the arts.

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Founding Organisation

Arts Whakatāne has presented the Molly Morpeth Canaday Award since 1991

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Exhibition Partner

Whakatāne Library and Exhibitions Centre - Te Kōputu a te whanga a Toi

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Major Sponsor

Molly Morpeth Canaday Trust

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