Two new emerging artists clinch annual awards

Glaister Ennor Graduate Art Awards
Orex Gallery
Until June 29

The annual Glaister Ennor Arts Awards, which are jointly sponsored with Barfoot and Thompson, have just been announced.

Judged by this reviewer, they are intended to support artists studying at tertiary art schools in Auckland who are at the point whre they are beginning to establish themselves as art practitioners.

This year's Glaister Ennor Award winner is Unitec student David Austin for his photographic construction Helensville circa 1959.

I noted that the work had arisen out of the artist's search for notions about what makes local communities. The artist had been told a tale about a man who asked the local mechanic to fit a propeller to a motor in order that he might have a personal helicopter.

The artist  has re-imagined the event from the 1950s and reconstructed it by separately taking photos of models  dressed in clothes of the period and then digitally manipulating them into a panorama which has the appearance of a staged photograph.

The work is not unlike Rembrandt's The Night Watch or the paintings of historical events.

The scene has some connections with the mythic tale of Daedalus, who built wings for himself and his son Icarus. But it also resembles the many religious paintings from the Renaissance and beyond where anonymous people witness an event involving Christ or a saint.

The main character, like the saints of old, appears to be holding what are his attributes – a wrench and propeller.

But not only is the work in the tradition of the history painting it is also strongly connected to the contemporary work of photographers such as the Canadian Jeff Walls, German Andreas Gursky and American Cindy Sherman, who uses herself in her photographs to create fictions.

The digitally manipulated tableau which is somewhere between a visual poem and a mythic story is a celebration of the everyday, but it also manages to capture something of the universality of human relationships and experiences.

Set at an angle

The winner of the Barfoot and Thompson Award was Elam student Ian Peter Weston for his painting Anti Flash White then oh boy! (that’s a blue steel dad) now a restoration work. It is a white painted construction with a slightly corrugated surface of white painted paper set at an angle to the wall.

It is a work which connects with the earliest of the abstract paintings, such as White on White by Russian artist Malevich, as well as the geometric work of Elsworth Kelly and Frank Stella, which attempt to float in space as fields of colour.

In some ways it is like an old master work which has sustained damage and been repainted, restored and remounted. This is why you have to look closely at the rear of the work, and at the surface. It is composed of separate sections but these overlap, have been reworked, repaired and added to.

It also exists as some sort of architectural component and has much in common with the work of architects like Frank Gehry.

It is an ambiguous piece which is reflected in the changing light reflections of the corrugated surface. It is a feature of the wall rather than something on the wall, and what at first seems to be a hinge is, in fact, a solid securing device.

It is also tantalising in the way it is on one level extremely simple but on another it is complicated, unfinished, solid and ethereal.