Master of Fine Arts student wins national award

Congratulations to Master of Fine Arts student Sylvia Peattie, for winning one of two Rosemary Seymour Awards for 2025. The fund was established in 1985 in the memory of Waikato sociologist Rosemary Seymour.

Distributed by feminist organisation the Women's Studies Association (NZ)/Pae Akoranga Wāhine, Sylvia was named winner of the Open to All Women category. She will receive $1,500 towards her MFA project, Shapeshifter: Meter Theon: Re-centralising the Marginalised Feminine and Feminist Spirituality through Assemblage and Collage. 

Judges said they were impressed with the quality of this year's Open to All Women applicants, and said Sylvia made a strong case for the funding through her references to the aims of the Womens' Studies Association.

Sylvia is a MFA candidate at the Dunedin School of Art. Her practice explores assemblage, collage, and tesserae-based techniques, integrating neo-Pagan philosophy, feminist critique, and material agency.

Rooted in working-class narratives, her work reclaims marginalised histories, engaging with themes of embodiment, power, and transformation. Her current research interrogates the negotiation of meaning in symbolic and archaeological figures, situating her art as both spellwork and critique.