Artists with eyes on prize

Explaining Things by Dan Arps; finalist in the Walters Prize 2010. Photo / Supplied.

It has been 10 years since the launch of New Zealand's biennial $50,000 Walters Prize, and its fifth exhibition is installed at the Auckland Art Gallery and open for viewing.

The Walters Prize was created to make contemporary art a more widely recognised and debated feature of cultural life in Aotearoa, and is awarded to an outstanding work of contemporary New Zealand art produced and exhibited in the past two years.

The four jury-nominated finalists for 2010 are Dan Arps, Fiona Connor, Saskia Leek and Alex Monteith. Together they are the youngest group of artists to have work selected to date. The winner will be chosen by this year's visiting international judge, former Tate Modern director Vicente Todoli, who will make the announcement at a gala dinner on October 8.

Dan Arps

Born: 1976 Christchurch

Lives in: Auckland

Nominated for: Explaining Things, 2008, mixed media

First exhibited at: Gambia Castle, Auckland (December 7-24, 2008)

When Christchurch-born artist Dan Arps was making his nominated work, Explaining Things, he says it "didn't seem like a big deal at the time". Now being one of four artists to be a finalist for the $50,000 Walters Prize, many would say it is a big deal.

He says he "really enjoyed making Explaining Things" but found it strange that the Walters Prize jury chose this work. "In part because it was exhibited at Gambia Castle on K'Rd, which is a gallery I set up with a bunch of my friends including Fiona Connor, so it's very much like a show on home turf, and that gave it a really nice quality the first time around. In terms of the show itself, I think it's a strong show and a good show, but it's also almost an uncharacteristically minimal show for me. I think that's a good thing, and something that I've been returning to more and more."

For Dan Arps' 2000 exhibition, A Winter Garden, Christchurch gallery The Physics Room described the artist as "Part scavenger and part hobbyist constructor" and his work as "sprawling installations which colonize space, crawling up walls, hanging off windows and ceilings, and spilling out doors. From meticulous cardboard and paper constructions to warehouse buckets and $2 shop detitrus, Arps gathers material seemingly randomly, yet each installation is painstakingly built up and layered."

For the Christchurch-born artist's nominated work, the above description continues to be useful, but this time a selection of YouTube clips is included (in which people are trying to "explain" something), a barbecue table and chairs, posters, lamps, a handwritten note, a sandwich board and a wall light with "concrete jungle" on it. As the jury said, "things a long way from the everyday of art".

Arps' says he likes to use things that are "ready to hand", things anybody could have access to. "I've been thinking that these objects have all been divorced from their original purpose. As symbols they are kind of broken. So I guess they don't really make an easy sense, and in that they focus attention on our process of making sense of something."

Although happy with how the work has transitioned into the New Gallery, he says that "remaking a show has been a strange thing for me to do, as it's not something that I've done before, but I think it's a really great show, with really great people. Just being in the space is really nice, and it gets even better when everyone is around."

Fiona Connor

Born: 1981 Auckland

Lives in: Los Angeles

Nominated for: Something Transparent (please go round the back), 2009, glass, timber, metal and plastic fittings, acrylic, vinyl transfer

First exhibited at: Michael Lett, Auckland (April 15- May 16, 2009)

Although originally from Auckland, Fiona Connor is now based in Los Angeles, studying for a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) at the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts), but returned to install her work for the Walters Prize 2010.

Due to the site-specific nature of Connors' nominated work, the question became how could it be recreated away from its original context. The solution was to not try and replicate it, but to revisit her concept and create Something Transparent (please go round the back) II within a space at the New Gallery. Connor says "it was something I really wanted to see happen and I felt strongly about it. It's not as easy as just putting one work from one space into a new space. I wanted to consider the new situation and make another work in the series."

Coming from a painting background, much of Connor's work is now site-specific installation. "I'm interested in the given, I like latent details or latent structure that are already present in the space. I like to play with letting found objects and made objects coexist and I'm interested in confusing those categories.

"I think a reason that I work with architecture is because people often don't question it.

"And there's something really compelling engaging about playing with it. I like getting physically involved with a work, being amongst it and getting lost in it."

Her nominated work was an installation exhibited at Michael Lett's gallery space on the corner of Karangahape Rd and Edinburgh St. The gallery's front entrance was replicated, in both appearance and scale, 14 times throughout the gallery space. The installation filled the entire gallery space and (please go round the back) encouraged viewers to enter the gallery through the back entrance and see the work reversed.

Being able to see the work from the street, it quickly became described as a public work, surprising the artist.

"I was really overwhelmed by the response because I didn't conceive the fact that it was going to be a really public work."

Saskia Leek

Born: 1970 Christchurch

Lives in: Auckland

Nominated for: Yellow is the Putty of the World, 2009, oil on board

First exhibited at: Ivan Anthony Gallery, Auckland November 25- December 23, 2009)

Saskia Leeks' nominated work Yellow is the Putty of the World is a collection of 11 paintings with pale yellows and blues strongly dominating the colour scheme.

Her subjects of buildings, a sailing ship, a bowl of fruit, a cat or autumn leaves are more things to work against; she says it is more about the painting process for her than it is about the subject.

"I never ever throw anything away. When I start a new show I sometimes put old paintings out that didn't work when I started them and I rework them. Often you can see this [reworking] in the background."

The work's title comes from a book of short stories, but it's got nothing to do with the writing.

Leek just "wrote it down in a notebook because I liked the phrase. I like the idea that the title has some mystery about it, you're not sure how it connects to the work."

Having first gained a Bachelor of Fine Arts at the University of Canterbury in 1992, Leek decided to return to study last year at Elam School of Fine Arts. She says that during her recent study she was "thinking through things in a different way" so a few shifts have been made in her recent work.

A recent development is using the frame as part of the canvas.

When asked about it, Leek said "for a long time I really hated frames, I never framed my work as I found it really intrusive, but now it's just become a really integral part of the work".

The Walters Prize jurors said, "she does not strain to make a point about supposedly 'high' or 'low' art, about modernism or mass culture.

Instead, these works demonstrate the fascination that remains in such over-determined starting points for the act of painting, refreshing and personalising them."

When asked about the Walters Prize 2010, Leek says: "It's great. It's always good to have public gallery shows, where you get a completely different audience, [and] a whole different set of people get to see what you're doing."

Alex Monteith

Born: 1977 Belfast, Northern Ireland

Lives in: Auckland

Nominated for: Passing Manoeuvre with Two Motorcycles and 584 Vehicles for Two-Channel Video, 2008, Dual-channel video installation, 13 minutes 38 seconds, stereo sound.

First exhibited at: St Paul St, AUT University, Auckland (June 19-July 7, 2008)

Alex Monteith has a lot of experience creating multiple scenarios with multiple cameras for her time-based video art.

From sheep dogs and aeroplanes, through to surfers - and of course, motorcycles, some travelling at speeds of up to 300km/h. Most recently, many people familiarised themselves with her work, Red Sessions at Shed 6, during the fourth Auckland Triennial.

The Irish-born artist, champion surfer and Elam lecturer says she was surprised about the Walters Prize jurors' selection, because "it's a smaller work and more modest formally", reflecting on larger past works such as her "aeroplane project" filmed with the Royal New Zealand Air Force at Ohakea Airbase.

Monteith says she sees playfulness, edginess and risk in a lot of the finalists' works.

Her nominated work, Passing Manoeuvre with Two Motorcycles and 584 Vehicles for Two-Channel Video, displays all of these elements.

A daring "semi-illegal" lane split with two motorcycles on Auckland's northern motorway during morning rush-hour traffic, she says that by undertaking this work she "was trying to push what could be done in the little space between two rows of motorway traffic".

The bikes are a Ducati 996s (front bike) and a Suzuki GSXR 600 (rear bike), and the footage is filmed on sports-cam technology - the bullet cam.

Both video cameras record simultaneously and are installed in the Auckland Art Gallery as a dual-channel synchronised video installation. To avoid "sound bleed", distracting viewers from the other finalists' works, the Auckland Art Gallery has worked hard installing soundproof walls around the work.

Monteith says that it is important to her "that the viewers can see multiple views simultaneously, but also when it is installed in the gallery the viewer has the freedom to walk up to the screen and to see a tighter perspective and peripheral vision really filled by the detail of any individual shot".