Winner of the Walters Prize 2012

The Walters Prize 2012 was awarded to Kate Newby for Crawl out your window. The winner was announced by international judge, Mami Kataoka at a gala dinner on Saturday 20 October 2012.

Finalists

• Introductory logic video tutorial 2010, by Simon Denny: first shown at Artspace, Sydney (5 March – 10 April 2010)
• Floor Resistance 2011, by Alicia Frankovich: first shown at Hebbel Am Ufer, HAU 3, Berlin (25 June 2011)
• Crawl out your window 2010, by Kate Newby: first shown at Gesellschaft für aktuelle Kunst GAK, Bremen (28 August – 7 November 2010)
• Fanta Silver and Song 2011, by Sriwhana Spong: first shown at Gertrude Contemporary, Melbourne (4 February – 5 March 2011)

International judge

The international judge for the Walters Prize 2012 was Mami Kataoka, Chief Curator at the Mori Art Museum (MAM) in Tokyo, Japan. Kataoka’s curatorial practice extends to projects the world over, including the 9th Gwangju Biennale (2012) in South Korea, Phantoms of Asia: Contemporary Awakens the Past (2012) at Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, and Ai Weiwei: According to What? (2012) at Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington DC.

Judge’s statement

I would like to award the 2012 Walters Prize to Kate Newby. It has been very difficult to create an order among the four artists’ practices, which are all outstanding in different ways. While Newby’s work is probably the least eloquent by making minimal interventions into the given space, it embraces memories of locations, her personal gestures and subtle actions, which viewers can relate to through small objects embedded into the concrete ramp and the materiality of the suspended fabric. More importantly, the use of natural light and the way the work gradually crawls out of the museum space is the most reserved but radical way of transcending the fixed architectural space for contemporary art, liberating us towards wider universal space. The colour yellow emphasizes the cognition for the light and the space and the whole installation offers the physical experience and awareness of both void and silence. This decision is derived from my attempt to evoke a state of equilibrium in our ever competitive and hierarchical society and its abiding belief in power.

Jury

The 2012 jury comprised:

• David Cross – artist, writer, curator and associate professor in Fine Arts at Massey University, Wellington
• Aaron Kriesler – curator at Dunedin Public Art Gallery, Dunedin
• Kate Montgomery – senior arts advisor for Visual Art at Creative New Zealand
• Gwynneth Porter – writer, editor and publisher