The Walters Prize is a biennial award for New Zealand artist who have made a outstanding contribution to the visual arts in the previous two years. Honouring the life of an artist called Gordan Walters (1919-1995) the award was founded by the Auckland art gallery of which the prize includes $50,000 and an all expense paid trip to New York to exhibit at Saatchi & Saatchi’s world headquarters.
2. List the 4 selected artists for 2010 and briefly describe their work.
Saskia Leek - The picture is small so it hard to go into detail of it but by looking at it, looks like an island made out of ice or some floating piece of ice from Antarctica with tree like things surrounding these two figures which one looks like an ice witch lady who is getting captured by a super woman from the comics. The thing that first comes into my mind is global warming.
Fiona Connor - Another small picture, but by the looks of it, its a modernist-like building.
Dan Arps - Yet another small picture of a photo which captures that stereotype look of the pacific islands or tropical islands in general.
Alex Monteith- I think this is the video which shows 3 slides of a someone riding their bike on the motorway, which I thought was an excellent way to get a POV and feeling of a driver.
3. Who are the jury members for 2010?
Jon Bywater - Programme Leader, Critical Studies at Elam School of Fine Art, The University of Auckland.
Rhana Devenport - Director, Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth
Leonhard Emmerling - Visual Arts Adviser, Goethe Institute, Munich, Germany, former Director, ST PAUL St, AUT University
Kate Montgomery – Director, Physics Room, Christchurch
4. Who is the judge for 2010 and what is his position in the art world?
The Walters Prize judge for 2010 is Vicente Todoli. His position in the art world is that he was the Director for the British national museum of international modern art, Tate Modern until just recently he resign.
5. Who would you nominate for this years Walter's Prize, and why?
I will have to nominate Alex Monteith. The reason why is because its different and involves more of today's technology such as use of the video itself, cameras and in fact the motorbike and car used in the video. It really doesn't relate to my artwork entirely but by looking at the video, it reminds me of how it feels to drive, that drowsy feeling of following the road to your destination and all of a sudden snap back into reality when the ride is over. In a way, it does point out what I want to try and do in works in the near future which is trying to capture a feeling at a certain place and time using things from the place and morph it into something surrealistic.
Interesting comment about "feeling" in Alex Monteith's work. I thought she is just showing speed and how dangerous it would be. It is funny reading your comments about works.
ReplyDeleteFor Fiona Connor, she did this installation that are the exact copy of the gallery it is located. Her work really interested me because she is just playing with simple idea that if something is identical appearance to the background, it would be invisible. I guess it is really simple but kind of makes sense.
For Dan Arps installation, I did not quite get the ideas behind but I guess that is how it meant to be, something that is too random to explain.