Overview
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
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."