Week 3 - The Walters Prize 2010

Week 3 - The Walters Prize 2010

1. What is the background to the Walters Prize?

The Walter's Prize was named in honor to the later New Zealand artist Gordon Walter's. The prize itself was established in 2002, by founding benefactors and principal donors Erika and Robin Congreve and Darne Jenny Gibbs, working together with the Auckland Art Gallery. Gallery Patron Dayle Mace provides additional support to the artists for their participation in the Walter's Prize Exhibition. The Walter's prize winner will receive $50,000.

2. List the 4 selected artists for 2010 and briefly describe their work.

a) Saskia Leek - Yellow is the putty of the world. Oil on board.

Leek's palate of whitish blues and whitish yellows has evolved from paintings that respond directly to the look and the mood of the sun-faded prints and paint by numbers pastels and is treated in the exhibition yellow is the putty of the world clearly as the subject itself.

b) Fiona Connor - Something transparent. MDF, Plywood, plastic and acrylic.

Fiona's work makes the most of unsettling potential of the double take. Positioning multiple reproductions of the glass facade and public entrance tot he gallery in situ one behind the next. Fiona's main focus was all about how spaces operate within specific communities.

c) Dan Arps - Explaining things. Mixed media.

He has made careful formal guestures with materials as banal as breakfast cereal and sheets of newspaper - things a long way from the everyday of art.
d) Alex Monteith - Passing Manoeuvre with 2 motorcycles and 584 vehicles for two channel video. Dual channel video installation.

Alex's work is a 13min 38sec video using a motorbike and trying to find out what is illegal according to the NZ roadcode. Alex's uses two perspective's, one looking from behind to the front and another looking from the front to behind the driver.

3. Who are the jury members for 2010?

The Jury consists of 3 people; Jon Bywater, who was a lecturer in Fine Arts at the University of Auckland. Rhana Devenport, who is Director of the Gorett - Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth. Leonhard Emmerling, who was Director of St Paul's St at AUT University and is now Visual Arts advisor at the Goethe Institute in Mnich, Germany.

4. Who is the judge for 2010 and what is his position in the art world?

The Judge for 2010 is a man called Vincente Todoli's. Vincente has had a career in visual arts for 20years now. He was director, Tate Modern from 2002-2010, Chief Curator 1986-88 and then Arte Moderno 1988-96 and founding director of Museu Serralves, Porto, Potrgual from 1996.

5. Who would you nominate for this years Walter's Prize, and why? Substantiate
you answer by outlining the strengths of the artists work. What aspect of their work is successful in your opinion, in terms of ideas, materials and/or installation of the work?
I think I would nominate Fiona Connor for this years walter's prize as I found hers the most interesting. The strengths of her work were the ideas that she was trying to portray and how she portrayed them. I have to say that i definitely did double take on her work possibly even 2 or 3 times. I didn't even really realize that it was a work. Then i read the Statement on the wall and kind of had to laugh...."Makes the most of the unsettling potential of the double take". This is exactly what she was trying to get me and other people to do all along. She did it very well.

Week 2 - Hussein Chalayan

Week 2 - Hussein Chalayan

Hussein Chalayan is an artist and designer, working in film, dress and installation art. Research Chalayan’s work, and then consider these questions in some thoughtful reflective writing.

1. Chalayan’s works in clothing, like Afterwords (2000) and Burka (1996) , are often challenging to both the viewer and the wearer. What are your personal responses to these works? Are Afterwords and Burka fashion, or are they art? What is the difference?

At first i didn't quite understand 'Afterwords (2000)' but thought the skirt was pretty cool. Then realized that it actually transformed into a table.....Amazing!. This is such a great idea, but it makes it very difficult to pick a side when determining whether it is art or fashion. I guess it's borderline both? or wearable art?. As for 'Burka (1996)' i really didn't like this one for some reason. However i did find the meaning that i got out of it quite interesting. I have to say i did like how Chalayan played the meaning of the Burka against itself. Quite literally gradually stripping the burka of all it's religious meaning.

2. Not all clothing is fashion, so what makes fashion fashion?

Fashion is a term commonly used to describe a style of clothing worn by most of people of a country. A fashion usually remains popular for about 1-3 years and then is replaced by yet another fashion. Even though there are a lot of changes in fashion, most people do not easily except the changes.

A clothing style may be introduced as a fashion, but its use becomes a custom after being handed down from generation to generation. A fashion that comes and goes is called a Fad.

3. Chalayan’s film Absent Presence screened at the 2005 Venice Biennale. It features the process of caring for worn clothes, and retrieving and analysing the traces of the wearer, in the form of DNA. This work has been influenced by many different art movements; can you think of some, and in what ways they might have inspired Chalayan’s approach?

'The level tunnel' is a 15m long, 5m high installation that can be experienced from the exterior or blindfolded on the inside. Chalayan has developed an experience of the senses, working with a number of different materials as well as playing with scent, touch and sound. The viewing is blindfolded and led into the installation, where they are confronted with sound created by a flute made from a vodka bottle. Further on, a breeze carries the scent of lemon and cedar as the visitors moves along the leather coated railings. a heart monitor is fitted onto the visitor and a display on the outside projects their heartbeat to external viewers.

4. Many of Chalayan’s pieces are physically designed and constructed by someone else; for example, sculptor Lone Sigurdsson made some works from Chalayan’s Echoform (1999) and Before Minus Now (2000) fashion ranges. In fashion design this is standard practice, but in art it remains unexpected. Work by artists such as Jackson Pollock hold their value in the fact that he personally made the painting. Contrastingly, Andy Warhol’s pop art was largely produced in a New York collective called The Factory, and many of his silk-screened works were produced by assistants. Contemporarily, Damien Hirst doesn’t personally build his vitrines or preserve the sharks himself. So when and why is it important that the artist personally made the piece?

I think it's a little sad if the artist doesn't make there pieces themselves...but i guess it doesn't really matter, obviously if famous artists don't. I think it's more about the art and what there trying to say. I don't think i've ever thought to myself..'i wonder if the artist actually made this themselves, when looking at an artwork'. i'd rather be thinking about the ideas behind the work.