Inaugural Mari Funaki award review

The inaugural Mari Funaki Award attracted an outstanding response from over 500 international and local artists. The show, which comprised 31 selected works from the overwhelming number of submissions, was open until September 13, 2014, in Melbourne, Australia. The judges–renowned practitioners and educators Warwick Freeman and Simon Cottrell, and leading curator and writer Julie Ewington–performed the arduous task of awarding the AUS$5,000 prize to an established artist and two $3,000 prizes to emerging artists. They also awarded three commendations, the first, in the “established” category, to Jiro Kamata, a well-known artist from Japan who practices in Munich and teaches there at the Academy of Fine Arts, for his spectacular neckpiece, Spiegel. The winner of the 2014 Mari Funaki Award for Contemporary Jewellery in the established artist category was Kiko Gianocca (Switzerland) for his 2014 Veneer neckpieces.