Visual Art Update
The exhibition ran from 23-26 May 2019, in the iconic Deloitte
Building (Level 1, 151 Cambridge Terrace). Art teachers Bree Smith,
Amie Blackwell and ex-student Katie Hayles attended the VIP preview exhibition launch event with the other students, their
families, friends and their Art teachers.
The Creators’ Room is a new organisation which launched in Christchurch in July 2018. The initiative aims to provide Christchurch secondary schools' Senior Visual Artist students (Year 11-13) a platform to sell their works and be recognized for their talents. A total of 1,282 artworks across 16 Christchurch secondary schools were submitted to The Creator's’ Room selection panel in September 2018.
Last year, Emma Patmore and Katie Hayles, both from the 2018 Level 3 Painting class, submitted two of their original paintings to the Creator’s Room. At the end of last year it was announced that Emma Patmore (Year 13) from Riccarton High School, was the recipient of the annual $3,000 scholarship for further education in Visual Arts.
She was the first student to win this very prestigious award. Emma is studying Graphic Design at Ara this year and Katie Hayles is in her first year of her Fine Arts Degree at the University of Canterbury.
The other 50 finalists were also selected to become a part of The Creators’ Room - 2019 Collection.
The online gallery (www.thecreatorsroom.co.nz) will be selling limited edition prints of the students work.
Original work was up for sale during the 4-day exhibition with prices ranging from $200 - $800.
Twenty guest artists from around Canterbury also had work in the exhibition.
During the selection process, the Creators’ Room judging panel identified 15 Top artists from the 51 finalists – these works will be set up as a blind auction running over the four days of the exhibition. The judging panel to choose the exhibited student artworks and the overall Scholarship Prize winner consisted of four judges including:
- Amelia Guild: Practising Canterbury Artist
- Ben Reid: Practising Canterbury Artist
- Deborah McCormick: Executive Director, SCAPE Public Art
- Garth Galloway: Partner at Chapman Tripp, Trustee of the Christchurch Art Gallery, Chair of The Arts Foundation New Zealand & Board Member of Creative NZ
The Creators’ Room has grown from an idea founders Charlotte Sherratt and Sophie Paterson had to help showcase some of the outstanding artistic talent at Secondary School level, and aims to connect these young creators with collectors at their inaugural exhibition.
“We are well aware of the incredible artwork that is created at a school level and, more often than not, these student art folios filled with fabulous works end up either in a deep, dark corner of their parents’ garage or in the skip.”
“We have had the utmost support from the art teachers at each participating school who encouraged students to apply back in September 2018. We were overwhelmed with the number of entries we received for our first year.”
One of Katie Hayles’s paintings was chosen to be showcased in the article in Stuff about the Curator’s Room and the recent exhibition.
See the article here: