Wanton Widow, Kate MacKenzie (NZ), WOW Supreme Award. Photo: Getty Images
Reimagining a vintage china cabinet and Singer sewing machine drawers into a piece of wearable art proved a winning formula for Hawke’s Bay artist Kate MacKenzie. The surrealist painter won the Supreme WOW Award for her Wanton Widow creation in the Open section of the 2022 World of WearableArt Show in Wellington.
No stranger to turning her creativity to building garments, Kate also took out the WOW Supreme Award in 2014.
“Painting is my main focus, but curiosity often inspires experimentation outside of this practice,” she says.
“I have built garments with furniture and recycled materials, constructed portraits with cable ties, and sewn figurative works using layers of coloured tulle that possess a holographic quality that gives the human face a depth that cannot be achieved with paint.”
Judged by World of WearableArt founder Dame Suzie Moncrieff, co-founder of Zambesi Elisabeth Findlay, sculptor Jeff Thomson, costume designer Alexandra Byrne, Swedish-born fashion activist B Åkerlund, and Wētā Workshop co-founder Sir Richard Taylor; Kate’s Wanton Widow won both the main award, with a prize purse of $30,000 as well as the Open section award ($6000).
A total of 21 winners won more than $185,000 in prizes and this year WOW attracted 88 finalist entries created by 103 designers from 20 countries.
Alongside spectacular pieces of wearable art presented in a stunning theatrical presentation under the guidance of Executive Creative Director Brian Burke, the show includes more than 100 dancers, kapa haka performers (Ngāti Pōneke) and aerialists, as well as spectacular headline performances by New Zealand musicians Estère, and Sharn Te Pou. It truly is a visual feast for the senses.
Prime Minister Jacinda Adern surprised the crowd as a guest model at the Opening Awards Night, wearing a specially-commissioned piece, Digitally Grown (by New Zealand artist Dylan Mulder), which referenced the mountains of Aotearoa and connection to the land.
WOW 2022 runs until 16 October, attracting more than 60,000 to Wellington’s TSB arena, with around 35,000 travelling from out of town. WOW contributes nearly $28m to the local economy in Te Whanganui-a-Tara.
Photos supplied