Before you start throwing your weight around you need to have a realistic understanding of how much people care. That’s what Tate Modern in London discovered when it tried to get photographers to sign an agreement that any images they took of the Turner Prize installations would not be used to illustrate negative stories about the gallery or the award. You know the kind of thing: Tracey Emin’s unmade bed installation next to a pic and story offering some punter’s equally disheveled kip with an offer to sell at half the price. The problem the Tate ran up against was that quite of few of the photographers said, ok, fine they wouldn’t bother to photograph the exhibition at all. Whoops. Tate Modern backed down. Not much chance of the Auckland Art Gallery being that high handed. It’s hard enough to get any media interest at all without putting up obstacles. If you want to know how high the New Zealand media put our own Turner Prize on their agenda, try putting ‘Walters Prize Auckland’ into Google News. One hit.
