Elam alumni at Walters Prize show
1 July 2024
Works by finalists in New Zealand's most prestigious contemporary art award are on show from this month at Auckland Art Gallery.
Three former Elam School of Fine Arts students who are finalists for Aotearoa New Zealand’s top contemporary art award, the Walters Prize, will showcase their work in a free exhibition at Auckland Art Gallery from Saturday 6 July.
Juliet Carpenter, Owen Connors and Brett Graham are in the running for the award and $50,000 in prize money alongside a fourth finalist, multimedia artist Ana Iti. The winner will be announced by an esteemed international judge in October.
As part of the prize, the exhibition will feature new work from all four finalists.
Juliet Carpenter will present a reimagination of her nominated work, EGOLANE, 2022. The film installation challenges the conventions of narrative filmmaking through a focus on physiological states, and explores the relationship between new technology and human connection.
Owen Connors will exhibit a new work that explores altarpiece painting. In Land of the doubts & shadows, Connors deconstructs the traditional three-part structure of the Western altar into multiple panels, reinterpreting lost mystic and Queer symbology.
Brett Graham (Ngāti Korokī Kahukura, Tainui) will show a new large carved sculpture, a reinterpretation of work from his major exhibition Tai Moana Tai Tangata. The new work, Ka Wheke, 2024, re-examines the civic monuments and historical legacy of colonial aggression in the Waikato War of 1863-64.
The artists presented extraordinary works that address the cultural, social and
political conditions of our time.
Established in 2002, the Walters Prize is New Zealand’s largest and most prestigious contemporary art award. It was named after influential artist Gordon Walters.
The Walters Prize 2024 marks the first iteration of the award in its new triennial format. The change aims to help recognise an artist’s overall recent contribution to contemporary art, rather than a single work.
The nominees were selected based on their work from 2020 to 2022, a time described by the jury as one of unsettled exhibition opportunities.
“Despite this, the artists presented extraordinary works that address the cultural, social and political conditions of our time, and ask us to pay careful attention to the way histories are made, told and maintained.”
The Walters Prize exhibition runs from 6 July to 20 October at Auckland Art Gallery.
This story first appeared in the July 2024 issue of UniNews.