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Kate Newby has been awarded the Walters Prize 2012 for her work Crawl out your window.

Newby wins $50,000 and an all expenses paid trip to New York with the opportunity to exhibit her work at Saatchi & Saatchi’s world headquarters.

The Walters Prize is awarded for an outstanding work of contemporary New Zealand art produced and exhibited during the past two years.

International judge, Chief Curator at the Mori Art Museum (MAM) in Tokyo, Japan, Mami Kataoka says, "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."

Crawl out your window presented a series of works developed for the Gesellschaft für Aktuelle Kunst (GAK) in Bremen, Germany.

Newby joins a celebrated list of former Walters Prize winners and contemporary New Zealand artists: Yvonne Todd, et al., Francis Upritchard, Peter Robinson and Dan Arps.

Held every two years, the Walters Prize aims to make contemporary art a more widely recognised and debated feature of cultural life. Named in honour of the late New Zealand artist Gordon Walters, the Prize was established in 2002 by Founding Benefactors and Principal Donors Erika and Robin Congreve and Dame Jenny Gibbs, working together with Auckland Art Gallery.

The Prize was awarded at gala dinner at Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki on Saturday October 20.

The Walters Prize 2012 exhibition opened on 4 August and will run until 11 November. It is the first Walters Prize presented at the newly developed Gallery and, for the first time in the Prize’s history, entry to the exhibition is free.

Walters Prize 2012 Finalists

Simon Denny: Introductory logic video tutorial, shown at Artspace, Sydney (5 March-10 April 2010)

Alicia Frankovich: Floor Resistance, shown at Hebbel Am Ufer, HAU 3, Berlin, (25 June 2011)

Kate Newby: Crawl out your window, shown at Gesellschaft für aktuelle Kunst GAK, Bremen (28 August-7 November 2010)

Sriwhana Spong: Fanta Silver and Song, shown at Gertrude Contemporary, Melbourne (4 February-5 March 2011)

Kate Newby
Born 1979 in Auckland, New Zealand
Lives and works in New York, USA and Auckland, New Zealand
Master of Fine Arts, Elam School of Fine Arts, University of Auckland 2007

Jurors' comment:

Kate Newby's works alert our attention to specific textures and experiences that subtly set themselves apart from the everyday. Crawl out your window presented a series of works developed for the Gesellschaft für Aktuelle Kunst (GAK) in Bremen, Germany. Newby's projects there, like a number of others since, were composed of simple materials and gestures rich in association which quietly forged links between her host institution, their gallery spaces and the world outside. Entering into conversation with their surroundings in a sensitive and measured way, Newby's works drew from and amplified the contexts within which they found themselves.

Jurors

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

International Judge

The international judge for the Walters Prize 2012 is Mami Kataoka, Chief Curator at the Mori Art Museum (MAM) in Tokyo, Japan. Kataoka's curatorial practice extends to projects the world over, including 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.

Kataoka selected the winner. The Walters Prize 2010 international judge was highly respected former-director of London's Tate Modern, Vicente Todoli.

Source: Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki