| 13 September - 23 November 2008
The finalists
The Auckland Art Gallery has announced the four works by the
artists who have been shortlisted for the 2008 Walters Prize.
The finalists are:
- Edith Amituanai for Déjeuner
2007 Anna Miles Gallery, Auckland.
- Lisa Reihana for Digital Marae
2007 Govett-Brewster Gallery, New Plymouth.
- John Reynolds for Cloud 2006
Biennale of Sydney, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney.
- Peter Robinson for ACK 2006 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.
What is the Walters Prize?
The Walters Prize is New Zealand's most
prestigious contemporary art prize. This biennial award recognises an artist who
has made an outstanding contribution to contemporary art in New Zealand in the
two years prior. Named in honour of artist Gordon Walters, it was established by
founding benefactors and principal donors Erika and Robin Congreve and Jenny
Gibbs to make contemporary art a more widely recognised and debated and
prominent feature of New Zealand cultural life.
Since its inception in 2002, winning artists have been
Yvonne Todd,
et al. and
Francis Upritchard. Each received $50,000, plus the chance to travel to New York and exhibit at
Saatchi & Saatchi headquarters.
The jury
The members of the 2008 jury are:
- Jon Bywater - Programme Leader for Critical Studies at Elam
School of Fine Art, The University of Auckland.
- Elizabeth Caldwell - Senior Art Curator at Te Papa Tongarewa.
- Andrew Clifford - curator at Gus Fisher Gallery, The University of
Auckland, freelance writer and broadcaster.
- Rhana Devenport - director of Govett-Brewster Art Gallery.
What did the jury have to say?
In looking at artwork made since the last
Walters Prize, we sought to identify those exhibitions that have
done the most to focus and to steer the concerns of art and the way
it is discussed in Aotearoa New Zealand. The four finalists
have done this by making refined presentations reflecting art making
strategies that have particular resonance now. For the first time,
two artists previously selected have made the final four. Their new
bodies of work represent significant developments
in practices already noted by previous jurors for their prominence
in the national art conversation. A long short list was finally
reduced to a swarm of single-word paintings, sculpture that punches
its way through a wall, photographs that show us pro rugby players
working in Europe, and an installation that depicts the demi-god
Maui riding a surf board.
How are the finalists selected?
A jury of experts have been observing exhibitions around the country since
the last announcement. They met for the first time early this year to
decide the four 2008 finalists.
Who makes the final decision?
The finalists work is exhibited at the gallery and, on the basis of this
exhibition, an international judge selects the winner.
Auckland Art Gallery Director Chris Saines says;
"Appointing an international judge to select the Walters Prize winner 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".
Previous judges have included Harald Szeemann, Robert Storr and Carolyn
Christov-Bakargiev.
The Judge
Auckland Art Gallery is delighted to announce that the 2008 judge
will be Paris-based curator and writer Catherine David.
Catherine David, is one of the most groundbreaking curators
working in Europe today, having worked at the National Museum of
Modern Art at the Centre Georges Pompidou (1982-90), the Galerie
National du Jeu de Paume (1990-94) and the Witte de With, center for
contemporary art in Rotterdam (2002-04).
She is highly regarded for her groundbreaking role as director of
documenta X (1994-97) and her acclaimed project Contemporary Arab
Representations 1 and 2, produced in association with the Tàpies
Foundation (2003). More recently, she was a Fellow of the
Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin (2005-06), where she worked towards a
project entitled Di/Visions: Culture and politics of the Middle East
(2007).
Founding benefactors and principal donors
Erika and Robin Congreve and Jenny Gibbs
Major donor
Dayle Mace
Founding principal sponsor
Founding sponsor
Artist Profile - Edith Amituanai
2008 Finalist
Born 1980 Auckland
2007 Inaugural recipient of Marti Friedlander Photography Award
Graduated from Unitec with a Bachelor of Design, majoring in
photography
Click here to download full CV.
Nominated for Déjeuner (2007), Anna Miles Gallery,
Auckland 2007
According to the jury:
Edith Amituanai's modest and generous photographs, part formal
portrait, part casual snapshot, reflect her engagement with communal
and personal rituals, family intimacies and the subtle way
traditions mutate. Déjeuner is a layered, insightful
commentary on transpositions of a 'third culture' that investigates
new global labour and economic exchange systems, enmeshed with the
legacy of generations of displacement and migration. Her subjects
are New Zealand Samoans who today play professional rugby in Europe.
These images - taken 'at home' and 'on the field' in Montpellier,
France and in Parma, Italy - offer a powerful insight into the lives
newly forged by these elite sportsmen, lives that encompass
performance expectations, distant memories of family and a shifting
connection to the conception of 'home'.
Artist Profile - Lisa Reihana
2008 Finalist
Born 1964 Auckland
Lives in Auckland
Graduated in 1987 with Bachelors of Fine Art (BFA) from Elam School
of Fine Arts, The University of Auckland.
Represented New Zealand in the 2000 Biennale of Sydney
Click here to download full CV
Nominated for Digital Marae (2001-2007), Govett
Brewster Art Gallery 2007
According to the jury:
Lisa Reihana's Digital Marae is conceived as a project that
will evolve over a further two decades. Already, though, its
combination of originality and surety make it a globally significant
landmark in the articulation of indigenous narratives through new
media. Large photographs represent Maori ancestral figures as
pouwhenua, the carvings or sometimes paintings in a Maori marae.
Digital Marae's most recent form incorporated a new suite of
male and takatapui (cross-gendered) figures, giving the house they
erect within the gallery the gender balance traditional in marae
construction. The bold but intricate depictions negotiate the
contemporary space of their creation and their ancient subject
matter with a cinematic immediacy and allure.
Artist Profile - John Reynolds
2008 Finalist
Born 1956 Auckland
Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Elam School of Fine Arts, The University
of Auckland
2006 New Zealand Arts Foundation Laureate award
Click here to download full CV
Nominated for Cloud (2006), Sydney Biennale 2006
According to the jury:
For John Reynolds, playing with scale means working big without
becoming weighty. With his 2006 Sydney Biennale work Cloud,
he clearly had mastered this game, assembling a silvery field of
7000+ canvases that are both monumental and ephemeral in the way
they occupy space, causing viewers to navigate the work as if
floating through it rather than being intimidated by it. As subject
matter goes, it doesn't get much more ambitious than tackling the
identity politics of language by representing an entire lexicon,
deriving his text from Harry Orsman's The Oxford Dictionary of
New Zealand English 1997. For Reynolds, language is a lot like
precipitation, floating around us in a constant state of flux,
dispersing and condensing in new ways that can characterise a
culture. This continues his ongoing negotiation of the way
metaphysical constructs such as language (or mark-making) can
manifest in or occupy a landscape, as demonstrated by the signposts
of his 2002 Walters Prize finalist work Harry Human Heights.
Artist Profile - Peter Robinson
2008 Finalist
Born 1966 Ashburton
Lives in Auckland
Graduated 1989 from Ilam School of Fine Arts, Canterbury University,
Christchurch
Represented New Zealand in 49th Venice Biennale in 2001
Click here to download full CV
Nominated for ACK (2006), ARTSPACE 2006
According to the jury:
Peter Robinson's Ack confidently and assertively investigates
and animates space, material and form - its exuberant presence
engages the viewer in a confrontation verging on physical.
Robinson's practice regularly critically examines the structures of
cultural politics. Ack, however, adopts a more ambiguous
position, offering forms that are at once playful, powerfully raw
and seductive. The enigmatic title makes comic reference to the call
of a duck and has a fictional German quality that conjures meanings
relating to the land and to colloquial expressions. In 2006 Ack
occupied Artspace at the same time Robinson's The Humours was
shown in the last Walters Prize exhibition. Ack
announced itself immediately as a work equally worthy of this award.
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