Whanganui's Lynn Hurst named as finalist in national art awards

Artist Lynn Hurst has won a place as a finalist in the 2018 National Contemporary Art Award. Photo / Stuart Munro

Whanganui artist Lynn Hurst has been named as one of 32 New Zealand artists whose works have been selected as finalists in the 2018 National Contemporary Art Award.

Hurst's selected work Atomic Vanitas - Japan Floating is at the Waikato Museum but she has similar works in her Whanganui studio.

"It is one of a series based on Vanitas paintings," she says.

"They directly reference 17th century Flemish and Dutch paintings of the same name."

Hurst says the still life paintings were presented as arrangements of highly symbolic objects which depicted worldliness, prosperity and, to those who understood the language, the piousness of the patron.

"They were also about human mortality and included skulls and weaponry."

For Hurst's Vanitas series, she has used elaborate digital fabrication processes and a medical grade flatbed scanner.

The large work on her studio wall is loaded with post-WWII Japanese imagery - the Hiroshima explosion, Godzilla on the screen of a 1960s TV set, and a thermometer among other things.

Hurst says her scavenging for material to use in the series is "eclectic and far-ranging".

She rummages through junk shops and grocery stores searching for objects that are banal yet compelling objects of popular culture.

Born in Denver Colorado, Hurst came to live in Whanganui 24 years ago and says she finds "endless inspiration" here.

Reuben Friend, Director of Pātaka Art Gallery and Museum in Wellington, is the 2018 judge for the National Contemporary Art Award and assessed 331 entries before selecting the 32 finalists.

"This has been a very challenging task for me to complete, as there was no committee or selection body for me to confide in so all selections were purely based on my own personal taste in art," he says.

"This year's selection reflects my personal interest in media and technical artistic ability, balanced with my interest in the current, future and historical, ecological and political environment of our unique part of the world here in Aotearoa New Zealand."

The award is managed by Waikato Museum Te Whare Taonga o Waikato, which will host an exhibition of the finalists from August 4 until October 28.