An emotional Dame Lynda Topp has spoken of her late sister as "my icon" as the Topp Twins joined an elite group of New Zealand artists to be recognised by the Arts Foundation.
The foundation’s Icon Whakamana Hiranga honour has been awarded to 50 significant artists since it began in 2003.
The Topp Twins – along with glass sculptor Ann Robinson, contemporary Māori painter and sculptor Darcy Nicholas and writer Witi Ihimaera Smiler – were added to the group during a ceremony at Wellington’s Government House on Thursday night.
Dame Lynda's emotional tribute to Jools as twins receive NZ's highest arts honour - Watch on TVNZ+
Dame Jools Topp was told she was receiving the award with her twin sister before she died in May this year and Dame Lynda Topp received the honour on behalf of the two.
“To stand here tonight to accept this pinnacle of awards in the arts without my beautiful twin sister with me is both amazing and extremely sad,” Dame Lynda Topp said when accepting the award. “This award is for her, she was my icon,” she added.
The Arts Foundation describes the awards as “recognising the remarkable impact each artist has had on their practice, community and the cultural landscape of Aotearoa".
Dame Lynda told 1News it was an honour to receive the award.
“We’ve been called icons quite a bit over the last, maybe 5-10 years, but now its official. [It] means we can really party down now,” Dame Lynda said.
She said she was particularly excited to pin the medal on, on behalf of both her and her sister.
“I’ll take that home and I’ll sit up the top of my sister’s farm on the hill and tell her, and I’ll show her, she’s a hawk now apparently, she flies over the farm every day,” she said.
Darcy Nicholas, Māori painter and sculptor whose art has been shown around the world, said he had been making art ever since he could remember.
“By the age of nine, I'd already sold a painting, and I got 30 shillings for it, and I've sold over 7000 artworks since then all over the world,” Nicholas said.
Glass sculptor Ann Robinson, renowned for pioneering the lost-wax casting for glass in New Zealand, said being an artist saved her life.
“The people that I really want to thank are the audience, the people that look at our work, that come to our exhibitions, that buy a piece or two from time to time and keep us going and make us feel that we belong here and that we're valued,” Robinson said.
Writer Witi Ihimaera Smiler, author of the acclaimed 1987 book The Whale Rider, said the awards are an acknowledgement of past artists and future ones.
“We, the artists, represent the dreams and the dreamers,” he said.
The four recipients received their awards after the deaths of past recipients Maurice Gee, Sir Donald McIntyre, Greer Twiss and Fred Graham.
The Arts Foundation also acknowledged the death of Sir Sam Neill and said his Icon Whakamana Hiranga medallion would be passed on at the next Awards Ceremony, ensuring his legacy continued.
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