INFO
| Name | Sorawit Songsataya wins the National Contemporary Art Award |
| Year | 2016 |
| Organiser / Venue | Waikato Museum |
| Artform | Visual arts |
| City | Kirikiriroa Hamilton |
ABOUT
In September 2016, Sorawit Songsataya won the annual National Contemporary Art Award, receiving a prize of $20,000. The winning work, Good Kisser, featured two 3D-printed anthropomorphic vases, which reviewer Ellie Lee-Duncan described in The Pantograph Punch as:
One white, one terracotta brown, the two figures are leaning in to kiss each other. Each is anthropomorphically stylised with a sinuous ‘s’ curve through the body. Pared back, they feature closed eyes and exaggerated puckering lips. On the surface of each of their backs is a picture – one is an image of two characters from the cartoon My Little Pony kissing, and the other is a photo of a tongue alongside the word 'raw' carved into the sculpture itself.
Blind-judged by Misal Adnan Yildiz, the then-director of Artspace, Songsataya’s work was selected as the winner from an exhibition of 34 finalists. The awards are hosted by Waikato Museum and are open to any artist in Aotearoa to enter. Yildiz said of Songsataya’s work:
His 3D printed vases remind me of historical tools; like Kibele of Anatolia, they refer to the pre-modern. The 3D printed objects on a found table are a clear link to the tradition of ‘ready-made’. His work is also strongly contemporary in the sense it brings queer politics into the gallery remembering the recent Orlando massacre and the long history of the struggle for LGBTQ rights all over the world.
