Artists' explanations leave us little the wiser

By GAIL BAILEY

The Walters Prize, at $50,000 the largest art award in New Zealand, attracted hundreds of visitors for its opening.

People curious enough about the works could hear three of the four finalists - Jacqueline Fraser, Ronnie van Hout and Daniel von Sturmer - speak about their work. But if you were after an inside interpretation at last weekend's opening, you were mostly out of luck.

"I'm not going to tell you what it means," said Fraser early into the talk about her work invisible.

We did learn, however, why her ornate female figures were under the influence of anti-depressants, with each fashionable woman named after such drugs as Prozac, Diazepam and Pheneizine. It seems that having a member of the family at medical school can spark the creative imagination.

Fraser said the "formal symbolism" to invisible was a well-executed attempt to duplicate the room that was built for her as part of the solo exhibit for last year's Artes Mundi Prize at the Cardiff National Museum. There was black satin and Parisian lace in abundance and two grand chandeliers.

Moving on from the antidepressants of Fraser, van Hout went into a brief clinical explanation of DMT - a hallucinogen - that partly influenced his No Exit Part 1 and 2.

He was quick to emphasise he was not talking from personal experience. His talk was a little hard to follow.

No Exit, Sartre's play, was another influence, van Hout said. Then, in a complete about-face, he told the audience: "The work had very little to do with the play, although I was more interested in doing something with the play."

Van Hout talked at length about how his work integrated various "states of non-being," which, he said, had everything to do with art as "an artificial representation of reality".

Mannequin guises of the artist as zombie or as catatonic - along with rocks, logs and stuffed birds - make a sardonic commentary on today's contemporary artist.

Although von Sturmer did not use the D-word during his talk about The Truth Effect, the installation - a series of video projections to small white boxes on a stark white tilted platform - was enough to hypnotise the viewer. The everyday objects that get turned on their heads were part of experimental studio trials, said von Sturmer, admitting that there were elements of randomness and of the contrived.

Such items as a plastic cup, a tennis ball and a roll of tape are played upon. "I wanted to look at how we construct meaning with these objects."

Von Sturmer said his work made reference to perception in general and how we walk around in the world taking for granted our perception of reality.

He recreated The Truth Effect from a previously commissioned work. The whiteness of his installation has a jarring yet mesmerising effect. To use the space available as framing the work was a fundamental aim, he said.

The artist et al was not at the talks, leaving an open invitation for interpretation of restricted access, where a wire fence keeps onlookers from further disturbing the disorder of overturned furniture, old speakers and chaotic chalkboard writings.

The winner of the $50,000 prize will be announced on October 29. Those with a sense of adventure and an open mind can see the works until November 28 and hear other talks.

Exhibition

*What: Walters Prize Public Programme

*Where and when: Auckland Art Gallery, to Nov 28


Auckland Art Gallery