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Winners of the 2017 Arts Gold Awards were announced at an Awards Evening held at Central Stories Museum and Art Gallery on Saturday 16th September. The Arts Gold Awards aims to seek and celebrate the finest artisans Central Otago and New Zealand has to offer. This year around 200 entries were received from artists throughout New Zealand. 

The $5000.00 Russell Henderson Charitable Trust and Perpetual Guardian Supreme Award was won by Dunedin artist Blue Black for a ceramic work titled Repotted II. Judges Linda Tyler, (Auckland) and Denise Copland, (Dunedin) said the winning work was "distinctly original and imbued with associations of gratitude, warmth and love".

Gail de Jong, an artist from Bannockburn, was awarded the $3000.00 Nock Art Foundation Outstanding Central Otago Artist Award for her landscape painting Carrick Water Race. De Jong's work, an oil on canvas, depicts an historic water race which provides water for her property, near the Nevis Valley - it is both a political statement and a homage to Central Otago pioneers.

The recipients of two $1000 merit awards were presented to artists Inge Doesburg, of Dunedin for Soliloquy I, oil on gesso, and Marion Mewburn, of Millers Flat for From Earth we Rise, a trio of double - vesselled clay and dirt pots.

The Dunstanza Senior Girls achieved a Silver Medal at the recently held Big Sing National Finale in Auckland. The judges said of the choir. "A well presented and well prepared recital, you can be proud of your first Finale appearance. Well done."

They were also awarded the Auahi Kore Award for their presentation of a piece of music in Te Reo. Robert Wiremu the judge for this award said of the choir: "Congratulations! You have such a beautiful, delicate core to your sound. The irony of a choir from a provincial South Island School bringing a Ngati Whatua piece to the homeland of Ngati Whatua is not lost on me. Finally my quality test is based in the integrity of the pianissimo (quiet singing). Pianissimo is the basis of all beautiful sound. Without it, all else is noise. In this regard you are masters."

Excerpt from; The Dunstan Prospector. Issue#14, 7 September, 2017.