2024 Portage Ceramic Awards’ Premier Winner has a 'hard to pin down' quality 

The Portage Ceramic Awards have long honoured the dynamic world of contemporary ceramics within Aotearoa New Zealand.

The 2024 Premier Award winner and three Merit Award winners were announced at a ceremony on Thursday at Te Uru Gallery in Titirangi, where the work of 40 of the finalists is now being shown until February next year.

This year's judge is internationally celebrated artist and West Auckland native, Kate Newby.

"Our Premier Portage Ceramic Award Winner is Wendelien Bakker and the work is called 'Sea of Grass'. I couldn't quite narrow it down from two, so we have three Merit Award Winners. We have Terry Bell, Raukura Turei and Ted Kindleysides," Newby said.

Winner:

Wendelien Bakker [Portage Ceramic Award] Photo: Portage Ceramic Awards

After establishing her own criteria and process for choosing the winner from 257 entries in this year’s awards, Newby said her decision was based on a number of details.

Judge Kate Newby:

Portage Ceramic Awards judge Kate Newby Photo: Ted Whittikar

 "The people who I did choose as prize winners tonight are the ones that when I first saw the images they had an impact on me.”

Newby received three to four images for each of the 257 entries. "And I realised that the ones that I kind of clocked in the very start are the ones that I kept working with. And what it was about those was, it was something, it was a quality that was quite hard to pin down."

Merit Awards:

Raukura Turei, Nau mai e hine [Merit Award] Photo: Portage Ceramic Awards

Ted Kingleysides [Merit Award] Photo: Portage Ceramic Awards

Terry Bell [Merit Award] Photo: Portage Ceramic Awards

Of Wendelien Bakker's Premier Award winning work 'Sea of Grass' Newby says "it's notable because in the gallery it takes on the form of three photographs that have been multiplied to become photocopies which are given out to audiences.

"So for one it's the only artwork that's giving itself back in an ongoing way because people can come and literally take the work away.”

Bakker’s ‘Sea of Grass’ comprises photographs of an installation of porcelain in a backyard that “looks like a typical Kiwi backyard”.

“When you think of clay you think of firing something. You think of fixing it. You think of something complete and this is a work that resists that type of ending because there is no ending, it keeps going," Newby says.