Where’s Walters

On the day of the Walters Prize opening in Auckland we managed to see not one but two of the finalists in Frankfurt. In fact Simon Denny’s opening at Portikus coincided with the Walters one in everything but the dateline. Further up the Main River another Walters' finalist Luke Willis Thompson has a major installation as part of Foreign Exchange at the Weltkulturen Museum. He has taken on a rather breast-beating exhibition by the anthropological museum by focusing on repatriation from an individual and personal perspective. His presentation certainly stands out from the abstract good intentions of the rest of the exhibition. Denny has filled Portikus with an array of dense information systems, sly art references, ambiguous explanations and churning air conditioning units In a city at the centre of our financial systems and a country still picking over its history Denny has proposed something fresh about global manufacturing and the power of positive thinking. And there's also the odd thought that at least six other Walters Prize finalists have also shown in this city of finance and data flow.
Images: top, Luke Willis Thompson at the Weltkulturen Museum and lower Simon Denny at Portikus