NZ artist wins 'art Olympics' spot

By LINDA HERRICK

Artist Michael Stevenson, one of the runners-up in last month's $50,000 Walters Prize, has been selected to represent New Zealand at next June's Venice Biennale - "the Olympics of the contemporary art world".

Taranaki-born Stevenson, 38, who is living in Berlin on a one-year Creative NZ residency, follows Jacqueline Fraser and Peter Robinson, who last year made New Zealand's first biennale appearance.

The New Zealand site at Venice was visited by 22,000 people and attracted widespread international media coverage.

The dawn opening ceremony at St Mark's Square by kapa haka group Pounamu Kai Tahu, of Ngai Tahu, had a television audience estimated at 184 million people.

Creative NZ is paying for New Zealand artists to be at three biennales, at a cost of $500,000 a show, and will evaluate the benefits after the 2005 event.

Sixty countries are represented at the biennale, which has been running since 1895.

Stevenson is a 1986 graduate from Elam Art School who has exhibited throughout New Zealand and in Germany, Australia, New York and Los Angeles.

He said from France, where he is travelling: "The Venice Biennale is an enormously important forum for contemporary art, and I think it is fantastic New Zealand finally has representation at such world-class gatherings. It's about time."

Stevenson was selected by a committee of nine senior visual arts professionals, including Auckland Art Gallery director Chris Saines and Creative NZ chief executive Elizabeth Kerr.

Ms Kerr said the decision to send one artist to next year's biennale after last year's double-act "was going back to what's normal" for most countries.

Stevenson had been chosen "because our expectation is that he will, as he has done in many works, offer a reference to New Zealand in his work."

His work for the biennale was still in the planning stages.