Numbers

0   the number of artists living in the South Island who have won the Walters Prize

1   the number of current advertisements by Te Papa for a Head of Audience Insights #anditsgoodnighttoyoucurators

1   the number of shout outs The Minister of Arts, Culture & Heritage Maggie Barry gave to Simon Rees and the Govett-Brewster/LLC in her speech at the Walters Prize

2   the number of sculptures by British artist Antony Gormley now on permanent public display in Christchurch

2   the number of dealer galleries that got funding to attend art fairs in the last Creative NZ funding round

7   the average number in cents that the Govett-Brewster/LLC received from each of its 151,000 visitors in its previous financial year

11  the number of comments made on the last 20 EyeContact reviews

13  the number of themed permanent collection hangs currently on show as ‘exhibitions’ at Te Papa

50  the amount in thousands of dollars that Shannon Te Ao received for winning the Walters Prize

66  the average number in cents that the Govett-Brewster/LLC needs to get from each of its visitors this year (assuming that there are again 151,000 of them)

75  the percentage of Wellington’s City Gallery’s core staff that are women

Walters Prize winner announced

The Chief Curator of Hong Kong’s M+ museum, Doryun Chong, has given the Walters Prize to Shannon Te Ao. This is the first time the prize has been awarded to an artist outside Auckland. Te Ao won the Prize with his video Two shoots that stretch far out. Born in 1978 he was the youngest of the four artists nominated.

Image: Shannon Te Ao as he appears in his Walters Prize winning video

Where’s Walters?

The Auckland Art Gallery was far from amused when, back in 2012, artist-based gallery Snake Pit announced its own Gordon's Walters Prize with Gordon’s Gin (first distilled 1763) as the prize. Unlike the Walters Prize itself, the Gordon’s version was a free-for-all and whoever won the prize probably finished it off that night. At the AAG the Walters was taken by Kate Newby that year so it was a good time all round.

This year of course the Walters Prize is a much more solemn affair which is maybe what prompted the re-emergence of the Gordon’s. In a blatant act of brand disloyalty, it has moved to the younger gin maker Seagers (first distilled 1856) and taken on the name The Seagers Walters Prize. As with the Walters Prize, four artists have been snatched from the herd: an OTN regular (if once is counts) Li-Ming Hu along with Jack Hadley, Aysha Green and Fu-On Chung. In fact they would have made a pretty good Walters Prize line up themselves. There is to be an announcement and an award ceremony for the Seagers Walters Prize, a case of Seagers gin, presumably handed over by Judge, Artspace's Misal Adnan Yidiz (take that AAG).
Image: Seagers Walters Prize announcement (click to enlarge)

Judgment day

The judge for the Walters Prize 2016 has been announced. He is Doryun Chong, chief curator of M+ in Hong Kong since 2013. A collections-focused curator with a career of working in North American institutions, including the Walker Art Centre and MoMA, he’s certainly in the hot seat at M+.  This ambitious institution of visual culture has been ‘troubled by delays and the departures of high-level staff members’. Of special interest to NZ is that its curator of Visual Arts was for some time Tobias Berger, ex -director of Auckland’s Artspace. He left to run the also troubled Central Police Station (CPS) in Hong Kong.  M+ is slated to open in four years but already there is growing nervousness that the contemporary nature of the museum will provoke China.

While Doryun Chong is no stranger to making politically complex decisions he’s understandably careful with his words, making it difficult to get much of a fix on his curatorial position. Still, we’ve dug up some statements from interviews and links to a lengthy interview in Ocular part I and part II that might be helpful to Walters Prize entrails searching.

‘I am interested in cultural anthropology of our own times.’

‘I transitioned from academia to the museum world and I became more of a generalist–this identity has always been very important to me as curator’

‘Some people groan about how contemporary art has become too ubiquitous. But art was a rather elitist discipline that belonged to high culture, and it has broken itself down in a positive way to interface with, and be inspired by, other disciplines.’

A contemporary museum ‘… should look back on the history but should also be reflective of the time we live in, while also anticipating the future and being open to what is going to happen.’

‘...as a museum curator I have been very context responsive’

“sometimes life tells better stories than art can’ 

Who will he pick? 

Kind of obvious isn’t it?  (just kidding)

Here comes the judge

Who guessed the four selected for the Walters Prize? We got two right but even that was pure luck. We're assuming that Simon Denny was selected but decided not to come all this way just to miss out again (not selecting Michael Parekowhai for his Brisbane show was pretty insulting but to not tick Denny would have bordered on incompetence at this particular time). Looking at the list of four you certainly wouldn’t have bet the house on a Denny win had he been a finalist. 

Over the years the selection criteria for the Prize have changed a few times and this year quite radically. At the outset the Prize was for 'the most outstanding contribution made to contemporary art in New Zealand'. Later that shifted to ‘an outstanding work of contemporary New Zealand art produced and exhibited during the past two years’. This year it's ‘exceptional artworks that pushed the boundaries of art making in 2014 and 2015.’ No not you painters, sit down.

The elephant in the room is of course the director of the Auckland Art Gallery Rhana Devenport. Her relationship with one of the finalists is extremely close. In fact this is the second time a Reihana project curated by Devenport has been a finalist for the Walters Prize. In 2008 Devenport, as director of the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, was on the panel that selected her Digital Marae for the 2008 Walters Prize. For the 2016 Prize, Devenport has not only curated and promoted a selected project, she has also been involved in the selection of the panel of four that chose it as a finalist and she will also be involved in selecting the judge who will make the final decision. No doubt many, many Chinese walls are being built within the AAG but there will be intense interest in how these obvious conflicts are going to be handled.

Past Walters Prizes have delighted with unexpected wins and left field choices but no mistake, the selection of the judge is a critical decision in the whole process. Anyone who listened to Charles Esche talk before the prize giving evening last time knew that Denny was dog tucker. As we've posted before, one reader claims to have picked most Walters Prize winners just by checking out the judge’s previous form. There will be much searching through the entrails when that announcement is made.

Crowd sourcing

Word is that the announcement of the Walters Prize finalists will be made today. So is this rather dark and grainy photograph even worth posting? A couple of our readers certainly thought so and we’re an easy sell when it comes to gossip and hearsay. This pic is off Instagram and was posted in Feb this year. It shows Anthony Byrt, Tina Barton and Steve Carr huddled together in conversation. So what? Apparently there is also a link to Melanie Oliver and each of our correspondents feel that this curator-critic-director-artist combo fits the profile of the Walters selection panel like…one of those blue gloves they wear when they move art works. Couldn’t it just be some mates at the opening of the Christchurch Art Gallery? But what if it isn’t? What names are they muttering to one another, what’s that list just out of the picture they are so intent upon? Shannon Te Ao, Simon Denny, Gavin Hipkins, Seung Yul Oh, Fiona Pardington and Lisa Reihana. That’s six. They must still be including a couple of off-course substitutes. Or could they be….
(Thanks M, T and, a little later, D)
COMMENT VIA ANTHONY BYRT ON TWITTER :  "I was so drunk I got Steve to write shortlist on my forehead so I wouldn't forget it. Magnificent speculation, this."  OK Cross out Anthony

The road goes ever on

If the Walters Prize has done one thing over the years it has been great at upsetting expectations. No one picked Yvonne Todd for the first win and Dan Arps (2010) and Luke Willis Thompson (2014) were both surprises, albeit excellent ones. So what are the chances of Lisa Reihana landing the quinella? If she does that would make her the second artist after et al. to achieve the Venice/ Walters combo. Then there is the opportunity (from our reading of the rules) for someone to be the first to win it twice. As always the selection of the judge will be critical. For instance Simon Denny never had a chance at the last Walters with Charles Esche. One OTN reader reckons that a quick look at the judge's previous two exhibitions predict of who will get the Prize for the year. Maybe.

Some possibilities:
Fiona Connor did a knock out show at Monash that should be a contender again, and definitely Seung Yul Oh’s chance for a nomination on the back of his exhibition at Te Uru.

Hard to go past Michael Parekowhai’s survey exhibition The Promised Land at the Queensland Art Gallery but let's not forget Mike Stevenson’s survey at the MCA in Sydney in 2011 didn’t even manage a nomination, so don't hold your breath.

Fiona Pardington's A beautiful hesitation at the City Gallery has to be up there.

Simon Denny for Dotcom at the Adam, his survey at PS1, Venice and the recent Serpentine show although who would be surprised if he said ‘No thanks’.

There's probably enough recent work by Len Lye to at least put him in the frame.
 
Ruth Buchanan for her exhibition at the Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin.

And what would Billy Apple have to do …..

Image: an OTN artist impression (based on information supplied by readers) of the Walters secret-shopper selection panel. You can find a copy of the Walters Prize rules here on OTNSTUFF. http://bit.ly/1Ucpapv 

Old white men, gotta love ‘em

About once every four years or so, a magazine digs the ordinary-people-don’t-get-modern-art story out of a dusty file, smacks it around a bit, and lets it loose. This time it’s North & South’s (country folk) turn, probably to balance off Anthony Byrt’s enthusiasms in Metro (city folk). The writer is Mike White. He specializes in complex crime stories, has won truckloads of awards and studied at Cambridge, so it’s not a I-didn’t-know-any-better junior reporter at work here. 

The piece is titled … But is it art? and  here are the key points (plus - who could resist? - the odd comment).

• First up is Simon Denny’s exhibition at the Adam Art Gallery. White plods through a relentlessly negative description before launching into the irresistible mocking of the wall texts. God only knows we’ve done it ourselves but this is six paras in so White is making his position pretty clear. The 'balance' stuff he brings up later can be put down to window dressing. So why the question mark in the title it's pretty clear from the get go that White knows exactly where he's going.
• Next is Grahame Sydney (conservative landscape painter and regular contemporary art grouch). He gets to play the elitist card. 'They appear to be talking to themselves, rather than anyone else.'
• White then drags up a few of the stock examples regularly used to beat up the 'high-brow' art world. Et al in Venice (c'mon that was 10 years ago), Dane Mitchell at Waikato (six years ago) and last year’s Walters Prize. The final flourish is a quote from another well-worn critic of contemporary art post 1990, Hamish Keith. 'I think this Walters Prize has pushed the boundaries beyond commonsense, beyond credibility, and really it has made a hoax, a joke out of the whole affair.'
• White then raises his own colours a little higher and claims the art world thinks the public is 'hopelessly stupid', even using the phrase 'The Emperor’s new clothes' (insert laugh track here).
• Enter the contemporary art defenders (aka 'balance'). Christina Barton argues that the debate over art is 'frequently oversimplified’ and that people like White 'constantly reiterate old arguments and draw those battle lines in a really unhelpful way.'
• Wystan Curnow tells White that G. Sydney is 'living in a time warp' and that 'the inevitable rumpus around our Venice exhibits is tiresome.'
• Thinking this pro-contemporary stuff is putting the balance thing out of whack, White reaches out to Vincent O’Sullivan, poet, retired academic and writer on (you guessed it) Grahame Sydney. O’Sullivan lashes out at the art establishment. 'It's a sort of priestcraft with them, that they know the words to say but everyone else doesn't.' A bit rich coming from a long term senior academic.
• White follows up with print maker and art school educated Barry Cleavin who says he doesn’t want people explaining art to him and comes up with an insult directed at Wystan Curnow that’s a bit hard to work out.
• The big gun is saved for last, a real insider ex-City Gallery curator Gregory O’Brien. He thought the art in the last Walters Prize was all old hat but is 'happy for the prize to exist' so that’s a relief. Then O’Brien, who is a painter himself, wonders why 'we always choose installation artists' for Venice and that we are “trying to put ourselves on the world stage as a young sexy creative country” in a way he finds 'fatuous'. O’Brien thinks Ralph Hotere (1931-2013) would be less fatuous.
• Next up Courtney Johnston, director of the Dowse Art Museum, says that no art gallery sets out to 'alienate the public' (not hard to imagine what sort of question White would have to ask to get that response). She makes a pitch for something for everyone and adds a reminder of the geniuses who were decried and mocked in their own time (Monet, McCahon).
• Heather Galbraith, this year’s Commissioner for Venice, makes the point that new art always takes time to fit in and that many, many loved artworks went through a phase of being reviled and that people just need to give any work that seems obscure a bit of time.'
• The last word went to Creative NZ ‘s Chief Executive Stephen Wainwright. He thought the public’s right to give feedback was essential and “Inevitably some of it won’t be what we might prefer...”  

Encouragingly the only people White could find to trash contemporary art were five white males, with an average age of 70. 

Image: art cartoon by American painter Ad Reinhardt

By the numbers

To anyone (that’s anyone living below the Bombay Hills) who doesn’t believe that Auckland is now the Cultural Capital of NZ, here’s some numbers based on the Walters Prize and the Venice Biennale. And they are kind of compelling. Compelling that is if you believe that representation by a dealer gallery is one possible measure of an artist's standing. Anyway, of the 25 artists who have been finalists in the seven Walters Prizes, all are represented in Auckland and just seven in Wellington. Then in the last two Prizes non of the eight finalists are represented in Wellington at all. Of the nine artists who have carried the NZ flag at the Venice Biennale, only three are represented in Wellington. Over both of our major art events then less than 30 percent of the exhibitors are represented by a Wellington dealer. As to the South Island, someone down there can do that sorry sum..

And for the record, the lists:

NZ’s representation at the Venice Biennale:
2001 Jacqueline Fraser and Peter Robinson
2003 Michael Stevenson
2005 et al.
2009 Francis Upritchard and Judy Millar
2011 Michael Parekowhai
2013 Bill Culbert
2015 Simon Denny

Walters Prize:
2002
Yvonne Todd
Gavin Hipkins
John Reynolds
Mike Stevenson

2004
et al.
Jacqueline Fraser
Ronnie van Hout
Daniel von Sturmer

2006
Francis Upritchard
Stella Brennan
Phil Dadson
Peter Robinson

2008
Peter Robinson
Edith Amituanai
Lisa Reihana
John Reynolds

2010
Dan Arps
Fiona Connor
Saskia Leek
Alex Monteith

2012
Kate Newby
Simon Denny
Alicia Frankovich
Sriwhana Spong

2014
Luke Willis Thompson
Simon Denny
Maddie Leach
Kalisolaite Uhila

Liquidity

A while back we made a list of who owned what in New Zealand art. Killeen owns cutouts, Pick owns dreams, Mrkusich owns corners, et al. owns grey, Harrison owns cats, that sort of thing. Now we would add to that list Maddie Leach owns water. This weekend we went up to look at the MA candidates’ submissions at Massey where Leach teaches and of the 10 or so presentations four featured water (including one massive moving image taking up the full wall of a large lecture hall). Then yesterday we received an invitation to a talk at Massey by German artist Rainer Junghanns with an image that is so close to Leach’s Walters Prize newspaper spread as to be uncanny. Well forget it Rainer. Maddie Leach owns water.

Images: top, Leach and bottom, Junghanns

From the stream

Hamish Keith doesn't quite get it

The Walters Prize rules ok

With the 2014 Walters Prize behind us here's something to think about. What happens to the exhibitions that slip into the crack between the considerations of one judging panel and the selection of the next? Currently at least one of the judges is meant to see each of the exhibitions the panel selects, but what happens when we're between panels? If your show's overseas maybe it's like the Academy Awards: you've got to get the timing of your release right or you're out of contention.

You've do have to wonder for instance which of the next lot of Walters Prize potential panelists will have been to Monash University to see Fiona Connor's 2014 exhibition Wallworks. And who, if anyone, will be taking a look at Oscar Enberg’s Malmo show or made it over to the Liverpool Biennale to catch Mike Stevenson’s installation Strategic-Level ?Spiritual Warfare. There's no budget for this eyes-on rule which has stretched itself way beyond any usefulness as increasingly NZ artists exhibit everywhere.

Originally the idea was to give the prize to the artist who had made the outstanding contribution over the previous two years. You can do that without seeing everything. That is until you base the choice on a specific exhibition.

Maybe now after a dozen years of the Walters Prize it's time to dump the rules. The panel simply chooses the four artists it feels have done the best work over the last two years and the artists can either recast one of their exhibitions or present something new depending on what best suits them.

That was then

In september we: got unduly excited at te papa changing its photo policy • raved about the kentridge exhibition at the city gallery • wondered when the hell the te papa north thing would get off the ground • added some new faces to otn/studio • loved the hang of hotere’s airport mural • followed the shake-up at webb’s • went to see the walters prize • questioned numbers through the door as a measurement for art museums • showed flagging interest in the koru • visited Fiona conner’s studio • gave it up for luke willis thompson • reported jenny gibbs walking out the venice patrons after all those years • stuttered in indignation at the Auckland art gallery sound system

Simply the best

On Sunday 21 September we tested our now-you-hear-it-now-you-don’t audio system at Simon Denny’s Walters Prize discussion with Robert Leonard. The results were spectacular. Four days later the same microphone with its peerless intermittent broadcasting capabilities was the star at Walters Prize judge Charles Esche’s talk.

So when we needed the very best in broadcast quality for winner Luke Willis Thompson's presentation our revolutionary start/stop system was the obvious choice. Auckland Art Gallery. Technology when you need it.

Art was the winner on the night

Last night Charles Esche gave the Walters Prize to Luke Willis Thompson. As previewed in his talk the night before, Esche took a particular liking to the works that were in his words “tentative, quizzical and modest” and that existed outside the traditional gallery context (Leach, Thompson, ‘Uhila). He found Thompson’s winning taxi ride and the interaction with his family to be overwhelming in its “uncertainty, unease, anticipation and privilege.” Unfortunately Simon Denny, the only artist to exhibit physical works in the gallery, was misunderstood by Esche who mistook Denny’s work as a megaphone rather than the mirror it is. Still, a great result and exciting for Hopkinson Mossman who are now celebrating the second artist in their line-up to win in a row.
Image: top, Luke Willis Thompson and bottom the ride to the family home

The artist is present

Tonight Charles Esche will announce the Walters Prize winner. As you can imagine, at his talk last night at the Auckland Art Gallery there was a lot of second guessing around just about every example he gave and every opinion he put out. Esche claimed he still had to make up his mind, but if you believe that you’ll believe anything. Still OTN will be sending out all the news that’s fit to tweet from around 6pm and will record the winner on OTN Saturday morning for all of you who sleep through these things. Our Twitter feed is: https://twitter.com/over_the_net

Image: four sightings of Kalisolaite Uhila’s presence at the Auckland Art Gallery today.

Four on the floor

It was full on Walters Prize at the Auckland Art Gallery in the weekend. If you want to talk strange demographics, most of the 60 strong audience for Simon Denny were male and under 40 while upstairs at Maddie Leach’s talk it was almost wall to wall women over 50. Go figure.

Denny made a nice point that we’d previously missed: it was his fascination with the timeline format that drew him to the controlled maze-like walk in his installation at the AAG. When you get to the end and look back, all you see is the blank back of the canvases.  “That’s timelines for you,” said Denny. “They only see into the future. Turn around and look back and time is erased.” There were also some pretty interesting questions, one from fellow Walters Prize nominee Luke Willis Thompson and another from a tech industry guy about the uncertain impact of robots on the future. Reminded us of that great joke from organizational guru Warren Bennis: “the factory of the future will have only two employees, a man and a dog. The man will be there to feed the dog. The dog will be there to keep the man from touching the equipment.”

Then it was upstairs to where Maddie Leach was in conversation with Jonathan Bywater. Looking out onto Albert Park we could see Kalisolaite ‘Uhila hunched over a pile of clothing out on the terrace as Leach detailed the development of her project. This included how she discovered that the whale oil (as someone remarked, a phrase with added resonance today) she had secured wasn’t. As she said, a lot of her work was about determination and “not being deterred by what seems to be a full stop.” For those of us there we got to see a film clip of the whale oil infused concrete block being tipped into the ocean, and all four Walters Prize finalists in one day.
Images: Top Denny and Leonard. Bottom Leach and Bywater

Reading the Walters Prize

While the selection of this year’s Walter' Prize finalists has certainly encouraged a great deal more discussion than in the past, the traditional news media remains pretty apathetic.  An upcoming profile of Simon Denny in Metro may have a halo effect on the Prize, so a potential flicker of interest there possibly, but fortunately online there have been wide ranging and thoughtful responses. Cheaper than buying a newspaper and non of that irritating rustling noise. Checking them out is more than worth the effort.
 
EyeContact has delivered not one but four reviews (Terrence Handscomb, John Hurrell, Emma Jameson and Natasha Matila-Smith) all taking a serious look at the finalists, the politics of the WP and the work. The Pantograph punch leads with a quiz and follows up with Janet McAllister reckoning art is the winner on the day. Te Papa pitches in with a piece by Nina Tonga on finalist Kalisolaite ‘Uhila  and a long interview by Abby Cunnane with finalist Maddie Leach. The sane companion blog of Masters student Katherine Stewart promises to follow the award with regular commentary.  There’s probably more and if you let us know we’ll we’ll add them in.

Maybe the traditional mainstream media have had their day when it comes to the visual arts. At the same time as specialist print publications like Art News are taking the Prize very seriously interviewing all the finalists, Mark Amery’s fortnightly review has been dumped from Wellington's Dominion Post as of last month. But you can still catch his fortnightly reviews online at The Big Idea.

Simple as one, two, three, four

You may remember during the run-up to the last Walters Prize that an OTN reader claimed you could predict the judge’s choice by looking at what this selector had done and said over the past few months. With this year’s judge there's tons to choose from. Charles Esche is not your typical arts bureaucrat. He is a curator and museum leader with strong opinions and a highly developed sense of political injustice. To get a taste of Esche’s views you can:

Visit him on Facebook. Recently Esche named hard left wing British politician Tony Benn as a formative influence on him and reproduced on Facebook Benn’s famous five questions to ask the powerful (Q5: How can we get rid of you?). He's also a generous linker, always with an opinion like "good article here...there really is no 'Dutch consensus' between racism and anti-racism...either you want to continue celebrating white domination over other people, albeit unconsciously, or you don't. I vote for not doing it anymore.."

Follow him on Twitter:

Read his many interviews and discussions: Some are online with Esche constantly questioning his position on art and the role of the museum world. His view? “Art should be about doubts, relationships, questions - about opening up spaces, people and knowledge.”

So it’s kind of easy. Charles Esche will be looking for a work that is socially aware, takes a strong point of view and is posing important questions about contemporary life. Oh, oh…. That’s all four of them.

Image: word cloud constructed from a Charles Esche's interview on contemporary art

Stupid town

Who knew that Saturday is also award's day? And today our award for most idiotic prediction of nominations for the Walters Prize goes to (open the envelope) oooh, it's OTN. Thank you. Thank you.