Midnight Sun, Fiskars by Janetta Kerr-Grant. Winner of the 2018 Klytie Pate Ceramics Award.
The Klytie Pate Award for Ceramics is a national prize open to all ceramicists in Australia and New Zealand who are experienced in the craft. The award is now biennial and carries a prize of $5000.
In addition, the Award includes an Emerging Artist Award of $1500 and a People’s Choice Award of $500.
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Klytie Pate Award 2020
Entries for the Klytie Pate Award 2020 are now open and close on Friday 17, APRIL 2020 (please note reschedule)
Note from Convenor:
Through December and January we have received feedback from artists across Australia – many have been significantly challenged by the current environment and this has impacted their ability to meet the deadline for the Call for Entries for this year’s Klytie Pate Ceramics Award. To give these artists the opportunity to enter we have rescheduled the Award and Exhibition to take place, in Mansfield, from June 3 through to June 14 (over the long weekend). We sincerely hope this change helps our ceramic artist community – giving more time to plan, develop and make beautiful pieces and to enter this Award.
Conditions of entry (PDF format)
About the prize
The Klytie Pate Award for Ceramics is a national prize open to all ceramicists in Australia and New Zealand who are experienced in the craft.
The Klytie Pate Award and Exhibition was first held in 2017 under the auspices of Arts Mansfield and convened by committee member Poppe Davis.
In 2018 the award was convened by Miriam Zolin, director of the former Mansfield Art Gallery.
The prize in the award’s first two years was $3000.
In 2018 Arts Mansfield announced that the prize is increasing to $5000 and frequency is now biennial. Read more about the 2018 award.
Our aim is to provide opportunities for ceramicists and designers to compete for significant prizes and awards and sell their work, and to exhibit contemporary ceramic works showing design innovation and technical excellence.
Arts Mansfield believes the Klytie Pate Award and others like it enrich our cultural life and bring artists, collectors, curators and art appreciators to Mansfield.
The award is designed to encourage artists to continue their careers as ceramic artists. To be considered, artists must be able to demonstrate that they are committed to a career as a ceramic artist, commercially viable and with a small body of work with artistic merit ready to show.
About Klytie Pate
2017 winner of the Klytie Pate Award ‘A small brewed’ by Dianne Peach
Klytie Pate is a name that’s highly regarded in ceramics circles.
Klytie Pate was a prolific, pioneering Australian potter who was awarded an Order of Australia for service to the Arts during her 50 year career.
She was born Clytie Winifred Wingfield Sclater in 1912 and married William Pate in 1937.
After studying painting, drawing and applied art in the 1930’s, her talent led her to become one of a small group of Melbourne art potters who were pioneers of ceramic art nationwide.
Klytie pursued pottery professionally from 1945 until her death in 2010 at the age of 97 and she regularly exhibited for over 50 years.
No two pieces of Klytie’s vast body of work are the same and she is well known for her ‘Australiana’ and art deco inspired works, often featuring a delicate turquoise glaze which is referred to by aficionados as ”Klytie blue”.
In 1947, Klytie, together with Alan Lowe, became the first ceramicists to have their studio pottery purchased by the National Gallery of Victoria and her pieces can be found in museums and galleries across Australia, including the Beleura Gallery on the Mornington Peninsuala, which houses a significant collection of Klytie’s work.
The Bendigo Art Gallery held a popular an exhibition from November 2018 to February 2019: Daughters of the Sun featuring Christian Waller and Klytie Pate.
The Klytie Pate award honours the dedication and talent of Klytie while recognising outstanding skill in modern ceramics.
Melbourne Age art critic in 1946 of one of Klytie’s early exhibitions: “If any of these examples of Klytie Pate’s work had been recovered from the earth as a result of archaeological excavation, they would have been praised all over the world. Some of her flambe work is as good as the fine Sung bulb-bowl In the National Gallery.”
Klytie is the godmother of well-known Mansfield doctor, Will Twycross and certainly a contributing factor in the decision to start the award.
More information about Klytie Pate
Beleura House features a special exhibition of Klytie Pate’s work ‘The Klytie Pate Treasury’. Visit the Beleura House website to arrange tours.
Wikipedia has an article about Klytie Pate
Read an obituary of Klytie Pate published in the Sydney Morning Herald at the time of her death.