DUE to their gentleness, strength and gracefulness, which few other creatures can match; horses have fascinated and captured hearts for a long time and this love affair has inspired many an artist to feature them as subjects.
Recently, local arts students from 12 listed teams let their imaginations run wild in a sculpture competition with the theme Equine World at the Selangor Turf Club.
The teams came from eight art schools — University Tunku Abdul Rahman, USCI University, Saito College, The One Academy, Mangement and Science University, In House Multimedia College, the Malaysian Institute of Art and Sunway University College.
The finished artworks were presented at one of the open-spaces at the race club for viewing and evaluation.
The works were judged on content, originality, technique and overall aesthetic factors.
According to chief judge Syed Nabil Syed Nahar, he and the other two judges – Eston Tan and Rafizah Abdul Rahman – had an hard time in picking the winners, as they were astounded by the creativity and innovation that were found in all the sculptures.
However, this problem was solved when the three judges managed to select three of the most memorable and outstanding horse sculpture that leaves a deep impression in their minds.
The team from Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman (Utar) was the undisputed champion of the Horse Sculpture for this competition. The team walked away with RM8,000; while the first runner-up UCSI took home RM5,000 as their prize and second runner-up Sunway University College bagged RM3,000.
According to group representative Gino Cheah, the design was called The Ingredient of a Horse and the sculpture contains all the fundamental elements of an horse, from its head (which symbolised the myth and folklore on horses) to the body which signifies the present times and leisure, while the neck represents the yin and yang personalities.
He added that all the group members contributed to the idea of the design and it was his job as the group leader to combine all their ideas through the use of stain-glass effects.
“I feel relieved and happy that my team emerged as the overall champion in this competition as it shows that our painstaking efforts paid off,” Cheah said.
Besides the top three prizes, three consolation prizes worth RM2,OOO are also given out to participants who came in fourth till sixth position.
