The award for the Piket Art Prizes 2016 is a silver sculpture. One long line forms the centrepiece, which Schat calls the “dynamic line”. She explains that it symbolises the progress of the young artist’s art career. The winners of the Piket Art Prizes are still at the beginning of their career, with this perhaps being the first art prize they have won. “The shape of the award had to be able to move and develop.” Movement is key to her: “No beginning and no end. I do not like sluggishness”, she laughs.
Skewed staircase
On either side of the diagonal line, Schat has stacked square tubes as a sort of skewed staircase. She loves tilted shapes. “They give power to an image and call upon something unexpected.” She does not allow the design to be obvious. “That can happen quickly with stacking. I design it from one side, but make sure the other side is thought through just as much.” She says her jewellery and drawings should always contain “something preposterous.” The beams that face the viewer are sealed, which allows them to absorb light so they give a kind of reflection. “This adds toughness to the rectangular shape, and makes the image powerful.”
Silver changes from within
For Anneke, who only works with gold and silver, the choice to make a silver award was natural. Like an art career, “silver is a material that changes from within”, Schat argues. If the winners would take the trouble to polish their awards once a month, the sculpture could develop a nice deep shine, she says. “That shine should actually go into your artistry, which also deepens over time. When you’re young, you scan ideas, which develop over time. You will learn where your talents lie and you should not ignore that.” That is what the artwork is about, Schat says. “Your career is not yet fully completed when you’ve just turned 30. To me, that is important.”
A time of rampant hard work
Schat drew inspiration for the award from when she herself was just starting out as an artist. “That was a time of rampant hard work”, she explains, “and this goes for all artists.” “Later on, when you notice that your work is being accepted, you should be lucky to have formed that base from which you work. And then that baseline comes in handy as you continue to improve and renew yourself from it.”
Piket Award 2016
