Abstraction & Weirdness

It is hard not to be grumpy about the absurdity of the event itself—about making arbitrary judgements and giving an award for best artist (or whatever), about the desire to put art in the limelight and the pomp and earnestness with which it is all carried out. But at least one artist gets to have something approaching a year's income. And last time round, the expansiveness of the four installations was something to behold. This time, it is more frugal fare. As with so many exhibitions at the Auckland Art Gallery since its failed renovation, the works come in boxes, walled-in, isolated, contracted and confined; there is no spatial flow and energy. Moving from one box to another, one quickly finds oneself in another exhibition altogether (Aotearoa Contemporary) wondering if that was it—the Walters Prize—and, realising that it was, feeling miffed and short-changed (even though there is no entrance fee).

Perhaps it is not a coincidence that the winning artwork, Ana Iti's (2024), is the one with the mostand bangings. These are field recordings that produce, in the austere white-walled gallery, the atmosphere of Rawene Wharf on the Hokianga Harbour with the comings and goings of the ferry, which takes cars and passengers between Rawene and the northern side of the harbour, where Iti's marae, Ngāi Tupoto, is located. I sit down, back against the wall, listening carefully (it is not loud), soaking it in, feeling a certain peacefulness, time stretching out, as far back as the early nineteenth century when the sawmill and timber trade got under way in Rawene, and the 1870s when the kauri timber and gum trade was booming.