Gallery scoops Australian design awards

22 May 2007

Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetu won five awards at the recent Museums Australia Multimedia and Publication Design Awards.

Bulletin, the Gallery’s quarterly magazine, was again named the Best Magazine in its category – for the fifth consecutive year.

The Gallery was a joint winner of the Corporate category for its identity and marketing campaigns for Giacometti, Cecil Beaton and The A & P Show. The judges said the gallery had used "creative and inspired communication ideas" and a "clever extraction of fonts for the corporate identity for each campaign".

The Judges Special Award was also given to the Gallery for its identity. This, the judges said, "has escaped the traditional marketing tool" and by "taking the 2D to the 3D to give strength to the institution and make it more approachable with masks and pavement chalk drawing".

These are the same drawings that only last week won Strategy Design and Advertising Australasia’s only silver Clio Award at the world’s international advertising awards, the equivalent of the Oscars. The Clios celebrate excellence and innovation in advertising, paying tribute to one of the most interesting and influential art forms in modern culture.

Julia Morison: a loop around a loop – the catalogue produced for the show of the same name, won two categories, including being named joint overall winner for Best Publication at the Museums Australia awards.

The Judges said: "the designer has treated each page as a beautiful piece of art in itself".

As joint winner of the Exhibition Catalogue award, the judges said the Morison catalogue from "its cover texture engages one immediately but this catalogue does not disappoint internally with the first 10 pages introducing and tempting the reader even before the title page, it is a celebration of the artist’s work".

Acting Gallery Director Neil Semple says the awards are an outstanding achievement for the Gallery.

"The Museums Australia awards, which celebrate excellence in design and communication, are peer reviewed. With more than 40 employees, the Christchurch Art Gallery is judged in Level C which measures our creativity against all the major galleries in Australia.

"To win multiple awards in the last week and achieve such prestigious international recognition for our work is a real tribute to the creative talents of the Gallery’s staff and our design partner Strategy Design and Advertising," he says.

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