Overview
And the winner
is...
The Walters Prize 2008 has been awarded to Peter Robinson for
ACK 2006 (Artspace, Auckland). The winner was announced by
the judge, Catherine David, at a gala dinner on 31 October. Peter
Robinson will receive $50,000 plus an all expenses paid trip to New
York to exhibit his work at Saatchi & Saatchi's world
headquarters.
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 winner will be announced at a gala dinner on 31 October
2008.
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
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.