Call for papers

In a cavern, somewhere deep beneath the art world, is the unseen stream of decisions and deal-making. Only a small group of people visit and even fewer know where to get tickets for the boat. For instance currently floating along on the stream is the 2014 Walters Prize panel, whoever they are, who will be looking (or if the last one is anything to go by, not looking) at exhibitions like mystery shoppers. There's also a bunch of people who will be deciding on the next commissioner for the Venice Biennale (surveying the field it's probably between Alastair Carruthers and Massey's Heather Galbraith with Carruthers as the current off course favourite) and of course another mystery group will be deciding who's to go to Venice in 2015.

So here's a question - why are all these decisions being made in the dark? The appointment of the artistic director of Documenta in 2017 will be announced this November but it's public knowledge as to who's on that very significant panel. Why can't we have the same level of information on NZ plans? There are no commercial issues involved and there would be some major benefit. The Walters selectors could surely do with some input on exhibitions in NZ and overseas that might be worth considering and the Venice juggernaut needs all the good will and interest it can get.

And then there are the delays. Even when decisions are finally made why does it take so long to announce them? It can't be in hopes of a publicity blitz as the media releases are seldom picked up and the only people really interested could be drawn from the mailing lists of about ten dealer galleries. So why restrict knowledge of the final decisions to the committee, their immediate families, a few friends they bump into and people they meet at parties, some of who (hell maybe most) don’t give a damn?
 
That was really what got us to start publishing  OTN back in 2006, to jumpstart communications. So if you hear any of this stuff let us know and we’ll make sure the rest of you find out. And yes, wild guesses and overheard conversations in public toilets are more than welcome.

Inside the outside in

A great thing about New Zealand's Walters Prize in addition to the great artists who have won it, is the extraordinary line-up of curators who the Auckland Art Gallery have convinced to fly in to select those winners. Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev who in 2012 curated one of Documenta’s most thoughtful and dynamic outings was one, so too was Robert Storr who articulated MoMA’s collections for last decade of the twentieth century. But the first Walters Prize judge was the greatest of them all, Harald Szeeman who virtually invented the contemporary form of art curation with large scale exhibitions on ambitious themes. And of course it was Szeemann who memorably awarded the Walters Prize to Yvonne Todd.

Szeemann’s defining exhibition When attitudes become form held in the Bern Kunsthalle in 1969 has been re-presented this year during the Venice Biennale by the Prada Foundation. This complex venture was a collaboration by the architect Rem Koolhaas, artist Thomas Demand and the Foundation's director Gemano Celant. Their huge challenge was to convincingly present the Bern exhibition in Prada's eighteenth century palazzo Cá Corner della Regina. They did it by laying the floor plan of the kunsthalle over the spaces of the palazzo and creating something like a movie set.

To do this they built walls and recreated Bern details like skirting boards, doors and numbering systems but also left elaborate palazzo details as evidence of the overlap. The works were a mix of loans, reproductions, allusions and in a couple of cases, substitutions. This was not the expansive kind of installation we have become accustomed to but a spirited clamour of works and ideas in a compressed space.

The effect was extraordinary: something like the original exhibition, but with knowing references to the forty years that separate us from it. It was also refreshingly experimental, provocative and intriguing. To top it all there is a terrific (although expensive) publication which draws on the rich Harald Szeemann archives in the care of the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles. Szeemann was famously a passionate recorder and keeper of the record. Given the enthusiasm over the material presented in the Prada exhibition we can probably count on the Getty publishing more of the Szeemann archive in the future.

Images: Top, Harald Szeemann’s drawing of the layout for the exhibition. Bottom left, Richard Serra’s Sign Board Prop installed on a huge photograph of the original Kunsthalle’s tiled flooring printed on vinyl and right, visitors cross Carl Andre's 36 Copper square to see the rest of the show.

You can read a less favourable response to the exhibition on EyeContact along with more pics of the installation.

Prize list

Now that this year’s Walters Prize has been awarded, it seems certain that the Prize is in for some tweaking. The $50,000 prize has been handed out six times but if this year it was possible for the jury to make a selection based on exhibitions they had not seen. You can see a copy of the current rules here that clearly state that at least one member of the jury must have seen a nominated exhibition. Whoops.  Knowing nominated exhibitions determine what artists are required to present at the Auckland Art Gallery that feels fair enough. There’s got to be a way to exit this hall of mirrors.

The success of the Walters has certainly been due to the very open rules in place from the outset. It's been a tribute to the sponsors that the Prize has been allowed to find its own style. Bringing in an international judge has been a huge success (although it would be great if they could spend some more time here) and this year's Prize has apparently attracted the biggest audiences so far. As for the suggestion that it’s an Auckland prize, well, the rest of us might just have to get over it.

Here then our top 10 list of how to improve the current format of the Walters Prize. 

1) Drop naming a single exhibition per artist in the shortlist and return to selecting “works or bodies of work“ that has made an “outstanding contribution to contemporary art in New Zealand in the two-year period”. The jury could then include overseas exhibitions in their consideration without having to see them all.

2) Leave it to the artists to decide how to represent the body of work in discussion with the Auckland Art Gallery. If it is based on one exhibition, fine, if not, fine also.

3) Name the jury members at the start of the process. We don't understand why they are supposed to be anonymous to each other and every one else. Morediscussion and debate has got to be better than none.

4) Arrange for the jury to meet a few times during the two years. At present jury members work in isolation, better to let them compare notes, share ideas and check they are getting the best coverage of work between them. 

5) Make it a condition of selection that jury members agree to talk to the media.

6) Offer the overseas judge (one of the best and most important features of the Walters Prize) the opportunity to meet with the shortlisted artists before deciding on the winner. Not compulsory but it might be useful for some. 

7) Continue inviting past winners to the Walters Prize event - people love a sense of growing tradition.

8) Give the artists who don't win the Prize some more love. Sure they get a very generous $5,000 but on the night there could be less winner-takes-all. Champagne, flowers, a moment in the spotlight.

9) Dump the dinner for drinks and something more lively that doesn’t involve a string quartet.

10) Make the Walters Prize acquisitive. Good for the artists, good for the Auckland Art Gallery, good for the public.
Image: Kate Newby Yes

Lookalike

A reader (thanks G) sent us this Kate Newby lookalike

That was the week the Walters was

The winner: Kate Newby might have felt her chances were slipping as judge Mami Kataoka introduced her work as “probably the least eloquent”. Fortunately she went on to add  “it embraces memories of locations” and concluded by announcing Newby the winner.

The MC: Chris Saines went DIY on the introductions, which was a tough break for the Ridge family.

The past: For the first time past winners of the Walters Prize were invited to the dinner and were welcomed with a huge round of applause.

The jury: Having arranged for artists to haul their sorry asses from Europe and the Arctic Circle to attend the Walters Prize dinner, two of the jury (David Cross and Gwynn Porter) didn’t manage to make it over from Australia.

The judge: Mami Kataoka caused a brief will-she-split-the-prize moment when she talked about not liking hierarchies or choosing one artist ahead of another.

The fortune teller: Josie McNaught with great aplomb claimed to know the winner on her lunchtime radio show and Facebook, then she gave a name, and got it wrong.

The media: Next morning when the NZ Herald did announce the results it was in just a para and claimed that Kate Newby was “a strong favourite to win”. Yeah right. The Sunday Star Times ‘reporter’ at least spread bits of the AAG’s press release over eight paras with a pic of Kate Newby, which was nice. Unfortunately he also did a sex change on the judge.

The jury again: claimed (well one of them did anyway) that the AAG refused to let them speak to the media on the who-saw-what issue. Long-nose award for that one?

Image: Kate Newby I'm so ready 2010

The envelope please

The winner of the Walters Prize has just been announced at the Auckland Art Gallery. It is Kate Newby

The knowledge

Mami Kataoka, this year’s Walters Prize judge, will be back in New Zealand next week to decide who gets the cash and the trip to New York. Looking back over the winners so far (Yvonne Todd, et al., Francis Upritchard, Peter Robinson and Dan Arps) it hasn’t always been easy to guess the winner but recently we did meet someone who has guessed every winner from Yvonne Todd on. Not only that, they are also confident that they'll be able to tag this year’s one too. 

 So, if you want to be at the Walters Prize dinner next week and have the pleasure of just shrugging your shoulders in a so-what-I-knew-that-already kind of way when Kataoka makes her announcement, here’s what you’ve got to do. (Spoiler alert: it involves research.)

 No big surprise that each Walters judge brings along the way they frame up art before they came to New Zealand. This frame is what you need to define as it determines who they give the prize to. It’s as easy as one, two. 

1) Get a list of the most recent exhibitions, projects or biennales curated by the judge and read up on them very carefully to figure the kind of work that will be top of her/ his mind. 

2) Check on any recent (has to be very recent) statements the judge has made. 

Then simply apply the frame you have developed and see which artist fits it best, or equally, who falls outside it. 

But does it really work we asked. How about Dan Arps. Surely he was a dark horse winner? Not so if you look at judge Vicente Todoli’s most recent exhibition before coming to NZ. Apparently it was all very Arps-like and, as important, not at all Connor, Leek or Monteith-like at all. OK, how about Yvonne Todd? No one picked the first winner. Not so. Turns out a month or so before he came to Auckland Harald Szeemann who had famously supported young artists all his curating career said in an interview that he was focussing on supporting the work of young women. Game set and match. The three other artists nominated were men. 

Thanks to our Walters Prize guesstimator, you know who you are.

Jolly good company

The 2012 Turner Prize exhibition of nominated artists (Spartacus Chetwynd, Luke Fowler, Paul Noble and Elizabeth Price) has just opened at the Tate in London. It brings to mind the impressive list of the many great artists who were nominated for this prize but did not win. They include: Art & Language, Gillian Ayres, Patrick Caulfield, Jake and Dinos Chapman, Tacita Dean, Lucian Freud, Richard Hamilton and Boyd Webb. Our own Walters Prize has a similarly strong line up of nominated alumni who did not take out the prize including: Fiona Connor, Phil Dadson, Jacqueline Fraser, Ronnie van Hout, Lisa Reihana, John Reynolds and Michael Stevenson 
Image: New Zealand born Boyd Webb’s Untitled from 1988 the year he was nominated for the Turner Prize (collection: Christchurch Art Gallery)

Question time

The Auckland Art Gallery has played the decision by the Walters Prize jury to select exhibitions they haven't seen pretty low key. Apparently efforts were made to get the four jury members to front up and explain their rationale, but they all declined. We certainly never got a response from them.

You can see the difficulty for the Gallery when the jurors wouldn't play ball but as they were paid for their services it's hard to understand how the Gallery could just roll over on it. Who's betting the jury contract is being revised right now?

Given all this, what do you think could have been going through the Auckland Art Gallery’s head when it decided to incorporate the jury’s odd behaviour into its marketing plan? We kid you not. The tagline for the Walters Prize poster campaign is: “Can you judge it without seeing it?” It feels defensive but is probably meant to be provocative and street-smart.

Thanks to the Walters Prize jury’s no-go-no-see policy we all know how they’d answer the question.

But now with the AAG’s marketing department forcing the issue so publically it’s probably time for the Auckland Art Gallery to come clean and let everyone know where they stand on it.

The waiting game

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The Walters Prize certainly continues to bring up a lot of issues around how national our contemporary visual arts culture is. For instance, the commentary from Christchurch that the Prize is Auckland-based and Auckland-centric is mirrored by the fact that none of the four finalists (Simon Denny, Alicia Frankovich, Kate Newby, Sriwhana Spong) have a dealer gallery in the South Island or in Wellington and only one of them is in the collection of a South Island public art museum as a gift to the Christchurch Art Gallery (as listed in the online catalogues at any rate.)

Geographically speaking, people tend to keep to their own (in the beginning stages of careers at least) which has resulted in the move-North-or-vanish effect for Southern artists.

The patterns of public institutional collecting of the four Walters Prize finalists are also interesting and also Auckland-centric. The Auckland Art Gallery has relied on Rob and Sue Gardiner to select most of their collection of the four via the Chartwell Trust. It has an impressive 19 works but only three (all by Spong) were purchased by the Auckland Art Gallery itself. The rest are on loan from Chartwell. Te Papa has two works by Spong, none by Frankovich or Newby and two by Denny (rather optimistically registered as four with one work having each component part recorded as a separate work). By the time you get down to the Christchurch Art Gallery it is just one work by Simon Denny (a gift).

Auckland is relying heavily on the Chartwell Collection to tell its story of contemporary New Zealand art but the others will probably have to pay a premium for waiting.

12 September: The Auckland Art Gallery has corrected our post on their collection of Walters Prize artists. In fact not all of the 13 Simon Denny's registered on their online catalogue were purchased by the Chartwell Collection. One of them, a photograph, was purchased by the gallery. Sorry about that.

spam

unvarnished facts, reckless guesswork, insinuations and possible inventions that have landed in overthenet’s email:the new building for an art gallery next to te papa has been given the green light with a retiring te papa board member to be actively engaged in the project • tony de latour has had his name pegged to one of the glittering arts prizes • simon denny has been dropped from the exhibition showcasing the 'best of aotearoa’s young, mid-career and senior artists' funded by the nz ministry of culture as part of the frankfurt book fair • the labour weekend walters prize dinner is creating engagement conflicts for some of its patrons • another auckland dealer gallery is about to join the move west. any missed details, indignant denials or additions gratefully received, and any that makes us laugh out loud will be rewarded with a rare limited edition otn painting horse badge.