Wouna le Roux

While I spent the bulk of the first half of the year working towards the exhibition at Te Manawa, I was also in-between making work for art awards and competitions, even though I kind of decided to give it a break for 2025. I got caught up in the process of making for awards, and so work was packaged and sent off all over the country. This taught me a few things, and one of these is that some of these annual awards events I will not be entering into again. Others have a strong conceptual focus which doesn’t currently fit with my work. Some are just part of a lovely local community and taking part is great fun as well as a way to support local.

Although I was part of the UCOL cohort in the Manawatū Art Trail in 2024, it was very low-key and didn’t feel like a real ‘exhibition’. It was more to showcase UCOL, their lecturers, students and the work that springs from there. I was therefore happy to be included in the Trail Mix exhibition at Square Edge this year, where work was showcased in all the exhibition spaces. This meant I also had an open studio (I hire studio space at Square Edge) and chatted to some people who made the effort to walk through the building and the studios. 

During the same time – the month of October – I also entered the Manawatū Art Awards (previously the Feilding Art Awards) and was thrilled to be awarded a Merit Award for my Enroot: Rewind. 

This work was previously part of my triptych for the Master of Design, called ‘Departure’. I wasn’t a hundred percent happy with it at the time, so I decided to rework it. I added more wrapped ‘roots’, added a solid root-structure at the top, took away some of the original parts, and renamed it to be part of my enroot series.

Comments from the judges (Karen Secombe and Naga Tsutsumi):

‘This striking black textile work commands attention with its dramatic use of texture and form. The interplay of materials – smooth against textured, dense against fragile – creates a constant visual tension that pulls the viewer in. Intricate details and tangled elements evoke a visceral, almost human quality, making the piece feel both bodily and otherworldly.

“Enroot: Rewind” reflects an abstracted inner landscape, challenging us to explore the connections between surface and depth, body and psyche, material and meaning. It’s an ambitious, unforgettable work that stays with you long after you’ve left the gallery.’

Glad I took the plunge to rework it, and I’m over the moon to have received an award for it. Some details from the work: