Article

| 19 November 2009

Fiona Campbell, New Zealand's youngest major arts philanthropist and director of the Real Art Roadshow, has won the Supreme Award at the 12th National Business Review's Sponsorship of the Arts Awards.

The Real Art Roadshow visits schools for free and comprises one of New Zealand's largest traveling art exhibitions. The exhibition is housed in two huge trucks that each unfold to form two 78 square metre ‘galleries'. Each ‘gallery' displays over 60 pieces of original art by a cross-section of established and emerging New Zealand artists, including Don Binney, Seung Yul Oh, Robyn Kahukiwa, Pat Hanly and Fiona Pardington.

"It's a huge honour to receive the Supreme Award and also great recognition for the artists involved. I'd really like to thank the National Business Review for acknowledging the work we've done so far. With more sponsorship and corporate involvement the Real Art Roadshow could do even more," said Fiona Campbell.

The two collections of outstanding New Zealand art have toured over 200 secondary schools nationwide during 2008 and 2009 and were open to the public during school holidays - with over 100,000 visitors in all.
Real Art Roadshow will continue touring for the next eight years.

"This is a visionary project not only in its inception but in the way that it allows for other sponsors to become involved in a local, regional or national capacity," said NBR Arts writer and judge convener, John Daly-Peoples.

A major part of the initiative is Real Art Roadshow: The Book which tells how and why Fiona came up with the concept of the Real Art Roadshow. With a foreword written by Hamish Keith, it contains full colour plates of all works in the collection and is accompanied by accessible, insightful essays. This is available for purchase on the Real Art Roadshow website and at selected bookstores.

Fiona believes it is important that the Real Art Roadshow engages, stimulates and inspires, teachers and students alike, as many students in remote areas have never been to an art gallery.

"Access to real art adds a completely new dimension for many students by giving them the opportunity to experience the scale of the works, their colour, texture and detail," said Fiona. "I'm incredibly passionate about all young New Zealander's seeing our great art.
School students are tomorrow's artists, viewers and collectors," she said.