| 2 September - 19 November 2006
and the winner is...
The Walters Prize 2006 has been awarded to Francis Upritchard. The
winner was announced by the judge, Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, at a
gala dinner attended by Prime Minister Helen Clark on October 3rd at
the Auckland Art Gallery. Francis will receive $50,000 plus an all
expenses paid trip to New York to exhibit her work at Saatchi &
Saatchi's world headquarters.
Read the judges comments
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The finalists
The Auckland Art Gallery has announced the four works by the artists who have
been shortlisted for the 2006 Walters Prize.
The finalists are:
- Stella Brennan for Wet Social Sculpture
2005, first shown at St Paul
St Gallery, Auckland
- Phil Dadson for Polar Projects
2004, first shown at Dunedin Public
Art Gallery
- Peter Robinson for The Humours 2005, first shown at Dunedin Public
Art Gallery
- Francis Upritchard for Doomed, Doomed All Doomed 2005, first shown
at Artspace, Auckland
Each finalist will receive $5,000 thanks to major donor Dayle
Mace. The finalists were selected by a jury of four experts
appointed by the Auckland Art Gallery.
The history of the Walters prize
Named in honour of artist Gordon Walters,
the prize was established in 2002 by founding benefactors and
principal donors Erika and Robin Congreve and Jenny Gibbs to make
contemporary art a more widely recognised and debated feature of New
Zealand cultural life.
The $50,000 Walters Prize, modelled on the Tate Britain's Turner
Prize, is awarded for an outstanding contribution to contemporary
art in New Zealand in the past two years. Previous winners were et
al. in 2004 for restricted access and Yvonne Todd in 2002 for
Asthma
and Eczema.
The members of the 2006 jury are:
- Christina Barton - writer, curator and art history
programme director at Victoria University, Wellington;
- Andrew Clifford - freelance writer, curator and
broadcaster. A member of the Electric Biorama Spectacular, a group
which has been exploring the effects of sound and light in
Australasia since 1900;
- Wystan Curnow - writer, curator, co-director of Jar
Space and English Professor at Auckland University;
- Heather Galbraith - senior curator and manager of
curatorial programmes at City Gallery, Wellington.
What did the jury have to say?
"In deciding which artists have had the biggest impact on New
Zealand art over the last two years, the 2006 Walters Prize jury
left no stone unturned. After extensive deliberations, it was
surprising to find that four projects had seemingly found their own
way to the top of our list. Interestingly, some of New Zealand's
most senior practitioners featured alongside emerging artists, all
with fresh, vibrant projects that collectively demonstrated an
impressive diversity in New Zealand's current cultural production.
Without dispute we had settled on an exceptional group of works and
we unanimously agree that this exciting group of projects represent
the best produced in New Zealand since the last Walters Prize."
So who makes the final decision?
An international judge will select the winner, to be
announced at a gala dinner in late October. The winner will receive
$50,000 plus an all expenses paid trip to New York to exhibit their
work at Saatchi & Saatchi's world headquarters. The judge will give
a free public talk the evening following the award dinner.
Auckland Art Gallery Director Chris Saines says; "Appointing
an international judge to select the Walters Prize brings the
finalists' works to the attention of one of the world's top art
commentators, and also provides the opportunity for an ongoing
relationship for the New Zealand contemporary arts community".
The 2004 Walters Prize judge, Robert Storr, is curating this year's
Venice Biennale.
The Judge
Auckland Art Gallery is delighted to announce that the 2006 judge
will be Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev. Currently chief curator at the
Castello di Rivoli Museum of Contemporary Art in Turin,
Christov-Bakargiev is the forthcoming artistic director of the 2008
Sydney Biennale. Last year she co-curated the first Turin Triennale
and was previously senior curator at New York’s P.S.1 Contemporary
Art Centre.
Founding Benefactors & Principal Donors
Erika and Robin Congreve and Jenny Gibbs
Major Donor
Dayle Mace
Founding principal sponsor
Founding sponsor
Major sponsor
Artist Profile -
Stella Brennan
Born 1974 Auckland
Lives in Auckland
Graduated from Elam School of Fine Arts, University of Auckland
Lectures in visual arts at Auckland University of Technology's
School of Art and Design
Founder of the Aotearoa Digital Art online community
One of four New Zealand artists selected for the 2006 Biennale of
Sydney
Nominated for Wet Social Sculpture 2005
According to the jury: "Converting AUT's St Paul St gallery into
a public spa with dubious restorative intent, Wet Social Sculpture
is an irreverently layered result of Stella Brennan's interest in
the fate of modernism and the idiosyncratic ways that art draws on
and is absorbed by popular culture. Neatly combining her ongoing
explorations of abstract cinema, psychedelic escapism, suburban
consumerism and utopian architecture, Wet Social Sculpture is a
witty and engaging critique of how concepts age and are translated
into contemporary culture."
Artist Profile - Phil Dadson
2006 Finalist
Born 1946 Napier
Lives in Auckland
Graduated 1971 from Elam School of Fine Arts, University of Auckland
Nominated for Polar Projects 2004
According to the jury: "It is always pleasing and impressive to see a senior
artist's practice continue to increase in energy, range and sophistication and
Philip Dadson is currently at the top of his game. Having recently retired from
full-time teaching to concentrate on his own work, the last few years have been
busy for Dadson and the rewards of this renewed focus have been evident in his
work. In particular, a 2003 residency in Antarctica resulted in Polar Projects,
a large body of video and sound works, drawings and photographs that have been
variously installed around the country. The selectors were especially struck
with the video works, which powerfully demonstrate how Dadson uses technology,
found materials and the body in his distinctive way to capture and channel the
rhythms that resonate in any and every environment, even one as unrelenting as
this icy landscape."
Artist Profile -
Peter Robinson
2006 Finalist
Born 1966 Ashburton
Lives in Auckland
Graduated 1989 from Ilam School of Fine Arts, Canterbury University,
Christchurch
Nominated for The Humours 2005
According to the jury: "Peter Robinson's work has always been a challenge to 'good taste' and is no
exception. Here a livid lexicon of sculptural forms pay their dues to artistic
heavyweights like Claes Oldenburg, Jackson Pollock, Philip Guston and Franz
West, while simultaneously simulating a messy playground of consumerist excess:
a veritable feast of cigarette smoke and junk food and their nasty after/side
effects. This installation feels like a comeback piece, drawing together
Robinson's earliest sculptural pieces with his ongoing examination of the
insidious ways in which society is structured: to exclude and prohibit but also
to seduce and compel, using the visceral qualities of his materials to get right
under our skin."
Artist Profile -
Francis Upritchard
2006 Finalist
Born 1976 New Plymouth
Lives in London
Graduated 1997 from Ilam School of Fine Arts, Canterbury University,
Christchurch
Nominated for Doomed, Doomed, All Doomed 2005
According to the jury: "Francis Upritchard is an emerging artist making waves in
London (where she lives), New York, and New Zealand, with her twisted view of
her particular world and her peculiar take on history. Doomed, Doomed, All
Doomed, her 2005 Artspace exhibition, is a case in point. While the title of
this mini-survey evokes an apocalyptic gloom perfectly pitched to the
tenuousness of our historical moment, its contents speak of the past as she
creatively re-imagines it. Upritchard combines desiccated votives and tatty
remains with gummy models, half-baked trinkets and museum vitrines, challenging
distinctions between sacred and profane, hobbyist and artisan, bric-a-brac and
artefact. By compiling this patently fake past with its strangely pathetic
cultural inheritance, Upritchard reminds her audiences of what was and is
invested in all efforts to hold on to history. She shows how 'our' desires to
catalogue and contain are probably driven, too, by a thoroughly primitive fear
of annihilation from which none of us are entirely free, not even at this very
minute."
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