The Team McMillan Ford Art Award
BEVERLY SIMMONS
Compared with other prizes offering in the Fine Arts, the Team McMillan Ford Art Award perhaps betrays a degree of parochialism in its intent. It is open only to artists living in the Auckland Regional Authority area. So, coast to coast, and from WelIsford to Mercer, are its residential parameters.
What then are its artistic ones? Judging from the entry-form they are wide indeed - perhaps too wide for conclusive judging. Subject: open. Medium: any - as long as it can be hung on a wall. And the prize itself? $3,000. This is not an inconsiderable sum compared with national awards, and is certainly a figure geared to prices currently asked for by pre-eminent painters at Auckland's dealer galleries.
And what is the spin-off to the sponsor?
The cynic will say 'well, fifty percent of that amount can be written off for tax purposes, as can the costs of promoting the prize': but then that sort of sponsorship could have gone to underwriting a marching team or promoting a roller skating marathon.
Mary Mcintyre with her 1983 award-winning painting Crown of Flags
The motivation for espousing art, according to Robert McMillan, the firm's managing director, was that over the past few years he had noticed that with cutbacks in official funding the Fine Arts were undergoing a lean time. Moreover, setting up a prize like this encouraged greater community involvement, a trend borne out by last year's Award when 120 artists submitted work seen by several thousand Aucklanders both at the Society of Arts galleries and at the TMF showroom in Greenlane. Of the 120 entrants, twenty-five were artists with established reputations in Auckland.
Additionally, for the sponsor the prize is an image-booster. Dominion Breweries probably didn't sell any more beer as result of the Kelliher Prize, just as probably McMillans won't sell any more cars; but it does add a useful cachet to commercial exchange and negotiation to know that one is dealing with a business that thinks beyond crank-shafts and sales targets.
Management of the Award is by the Auckland Society of Arts at whose galleries all the entries are previewed before the winner and finalists are selected by the judge. This year the judge is Gordon H. Brown, noted art historian and critic.
The policy at the moment is to continue the Award on an acquisitive basis and thus build up a collection of Auckland contemporary art which will eventually be presented to the City. Curatorial care is the responsibility of the Auckland Society of Arts.
The award of last year's prize to Mary McIntyre's painting Crown of Flags was controversial enough to alert the media to the notion that there is news in art, and artists to the fact that competitions don't necessarily sharpen the public's sensitivity to or understanding of a visual statement.
For some artists this type of 'first past the post' competition will always be an anathema and the very negation of the purpose of creativity. For others there is the enticement of a glittering prize and the opportunity of being shown with their peers. For the informed public it provides the opportunity to assess the general direction and standard of painting/(wallhangings) in Auckland and for the sponsor it affords a public relations coup that is not readily matched by its business competitors. It is, in short, a no-loss situation.
The Team McMillan Ford Art Award, under the aegis of the ASA. Last day for entry, 13 April. Last day for depositing works, 20 April. Preview dates, 7 - 18 May; exhibition of finalists and announcement of winner, 21 May. Exhibition closes 2 June.