Ikebana Container Award
Following artists have been selected as the Finalists for the Hiroe Swen Award 2022: List of the Finalists 2022 (Online Catalogue)
The winner of the Hiroe Swen Award 2022 is Colin Hopkins. Congratulations! He received our certificate and $1000 cash prize.
A chance encounter with his uncle’s abandoned piano led Colin Hopkins to develop a deep and life-long interest in contemporary improvised music. Completing a Bachelor of Music in 1985, his fascination with form and structure ultimately broadened to include the long-term study of architecture at Melbourne University.
After an extensive period of travel that spanned Europe and Asia he has recently merged his dual passions for music and architecture into the one hybrid ceramic practice that fuses all the risk taking and immediacy of an improvised musical performance with the equal and opposite desire to create a meticulously resolved architecture of tactile durability. Working from the Abbotsford Convent at Cone 11 Ceramics Studio, Hopkins established ‘Porcelume’ with the aid of The Australia Council for The Arts in 2012 specifically to produce a high quality, hand thrown and large scale ceramic lighting range.
In addition to his work as a ceramicist, Hopkins continues to perform regularly as an improvising pianist whilst also maintaining a small architecture practice centred on the exploration of passive, thermo-efficient design principles.
