Auckland Art Fair E-News

e-News September 2008

And the winner is.....

It’s award season in New Zealand with the Trifecta of major prizes: The Waikato, Wallace and Walters, all taking place over 3 months.

The winner of the 2008 Trust Waikato National Contemporary Art Award, announced on 23 August, was Patrick Lundberg with his entry 'Untitled' a found piece of plaster board revealing the history of a piece of wall.

Richard Lewer’s pool table work, Skill Discipline Training, took away the Paramount prize, including a studio residency in New York at the 17th Annual Wallace Art Awards announced on 1 September.

Other winners last night were Heather Straka, awarded the inaugural Kaipara Foundation Wallace Trust Award, and Ruth Cleland, who received the Park Lane Wallace Trust Development Award.

The Walters Prize will be announced by this year’s judge, Paris-based curator and writer Catherine David, in late October. The prize dinner will not be held at the gallery this year due to renovations, but the good news is, at long last, the development is now underway.

Lastly, a reminder that SCAPE, the Christchurch Biennial of art in a public space, opens on 19 September and runs through 2 November. Please click the link below for details.

Enjoy the first month of spring.

Jennifer Buckley
Director, Auckland Art Fair

highlights.

Artis
Paul Hartigan

Paul Hartigan unleashes luminous colour in his exhibition Chromophobia. Showing domestically scaled neon artworks alongside H-type canvases and Ultrachrome prints, these new works typify Hartigan’s command of colour and line and his unique sense of wit. Chromophobia runs from Sept 17 – Oct 12. more

SOCA
Zarahn Southon

Southon returns from two years training in France and Italy where he further developed his understanding of the human form. The experience allowed Southon "to tap into a more contemporary approach to classical tradition, where there was no sense of nostalgia for the past”. Studio Works runs from Sept 23 - Oct 6. more

OREXART
Glen Wolfgramm

Glen Wolfgramm has to get up very early in the morning to create works that look as if he’s been up all night. The vast, vibrant surfaces of the 2m canvases in Big Time evoke the 24-hour energy of the world’s largest Polynesian city. Big Time runs from Sept 2 – 20. more

BOWEN GALLERIES
Kim Pieters

Kim Pieters, of Dutch/English descent, is primarily an informal abstractionist painter using mixed media on board and various papers, including building paper and wallpaper. Her current studio can be found in the depths of the Dunedin wharf area. Exhibition runs from September 8 – 27. more

MCNAMARA GALLERY
Peter Black

As if reporting from a forbidden zone, Peter’s focuses on industrial areas and their place in our landscape. The fences bordered by weeds, the yard with the plastic seats, the bunker like buildings are recognisably ours yet on our periphery, zoned out of view. Looking at the overlooked animates both the work and our viewing. Outskirts runs from Sept 5 - 26. more

SUTTON GALLERY
David Rosetzky

More filmic than Rosetzky’s previous works, yet true to his technical and aesthetic precision he presents quiet and rhythmic scenarios in which human behaviour, individuality and identity come under intimate observation. Think of Yourself as Plural runs from Sept 13 - Oct 11. more

Auckland Art Gallery

More than five years of planning is turning into action with major work on the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki development starting next week.
Auckland City Council received the Environment Court’s decision confirming resource consent, which has cleared the way for the construction programme to start. more

Links.

Trust Waikato Contemporary
Art Award

Wallace Art Awards

SCAPE, the Christchurch Biennial of art in a public space