NZArtMonthly

Artists are chosen on the basis of a body of work that has been produced over the last two years and that has made an outstanding contribution to contemporary visual art. The finalists are:

Et al. for restricted access (2003)
Jacqueline Fraser for <<invisible>> (2004)
Ronnie Van Hout for No Exit Parts 1 and 2 (2003)
Daniel von Sturmer for The Truth Effect ( 2003)

Last year, a jury selected Gavin Hipkins, John Reynolds, Michael Stevenson and Yvonne Todd, with high profile European curator Harold Szeemann selecting Todd as the overall winner. A change to the prize structure this year sees each finalist receiving a Finalist Award of $5000 thanks to new donor Dayle Mace, as well as the overall winner's cheque of $50,000. The Walters Prize was the initiative of founding benefactors and principal donors Erika and Robin Congrieve and Jenny Gibbs working in partnership with the Auckland Art Gallery.

Making the selections was a jury of New Zealand curators and critics who have been working away quietly over the past months to come up with the final four. In a statement, the jurors, Christina Barton, Dr Deidre Brown, Greg Burke and Justin Paton, say they based their selections on considering work that was "timely and important ... (that offered) something distinctive to what is "in play" in the contemporary art field."

The finalist's works are exhibited at the Auckland Art Gallery from 18 September to 28 November 2004 with the announcement of the winner, by American judge Robert Storr, coming on 28 October 2004.

Robert Storr Judge of this year's Walter's Prize

Donald Kuspit, Professor of Art History and Philosophy at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, describes Storr's approach to the nature of art in the museum as one that favours the underdog. " He describes himself as representing the underdog, because underdog is where the action is. Art, as seen in a museum, is a site for the oppositional - a space where the difference between the action of the rebellious underdog and the comfortable passivity of the establishment top dog is disclosed, Storr wants to bring the underdogs into the museum - in rebellion against the top dogs ... " writes Kuspit. In Storr's mind, for his first visit to New Zealand, each of the Walter's finalists might equally be seen in this light - as the rebellious underdog.

Et Al. restricted access (2003)

Van Hout - with his image of the artist as a 'wayward figure in contemporary life.'
Et al. - through the relentless search for hidden agendas, conspiracies, institutionalised behaviour and systematic structures and patterns, the denial of the individual.
Jacqueline Fraser - with her analysis of the cult of personality, culture, history, style and fashion using the very materials and accessories that stem from the fashion houses of Europe, translated into obscure narratives that are part sculpture, part two- dimensional wall drawings/constructions, part installation.
Daniel von Sturmer - who quite literally might be seen as the underdog by simply being almost unknown to NZ audiences, having exhibited largely in Melbourne.

Given Storr's credentials within the museum world, and Kuspit's comments that Storr's sense of art is guided by it being a museum phenomenon - the museum as "the place of art's manifest destiny", "presenting works of art as cult objects" - it is possible to speculate that what will impact on the Walters Prize judging will be how the art work operates within and uses the gallery/museum environment. And how it engages the gallery audience.

Each of these bodies of works has been presented in a number of art museum/gallery environments in the past year or so.

Et al. first showed restricted access at the Govett Brewster Gallery, New Plymouth as part of her large exhibition in 2003. As a work actively using the gallery space in an unusual way, it manipulated both space and audience to the extent that it was simultaneously frustrating and intriguing for the viewer. You could not even get into the room where all the artifacts, documents, files, books, noticeboards and furniture that comprised the work were stored. Blocking your entrance into both room and work was a barricade of hurricane wire fencing. You are left peering, straining, searching and hunting from a distance - feeling more like an animal in a zoo with goodies held through the bars and beyond your reach or like a secret agent who has managed to dodge cameras, security and alarms to get this far into restricted space but was held back at the last post - not being able to break through the final barrier. It is an encounter between the given and the inaccessible, going against the very rules galleries normally operate under - making art MORE accessible to the viewers.

Daniel von Sturmer's The Truth Effect 2003, arose from a specific engagement with the space at Melbourne's Australian Centre for Contemporary Art and has since been shown at the AGNSW as part of the Sydney Biennale. The white cube of the gallery room is paralleled with the white cube that features in the video works and with the white platform on which the video screens and projectors sit. With the dislocated sense of reality that occurs in a pure white room, the audience is primed for the perceptual juggling that happens in the videos. The artist plays gently with our sense of beauty, of balance, of truth, of reality, of physics, gravity and colour perception. Suspended for a time in a topsy turvey world, the reaction we feel as the audience is pure pleasure. I see therefore I believe. Things we know cannot be - are.

Ronnie van Hout No Exit Parts 1 and 2 (2003)

Jacqueline Fraser <<invisible>> (2004)