Exhibitions

Auckland

The 29th Annual Wallace Art Awards

Pah Homestead, 15 September–15 November WARWICK BROWN

Winners at the Wallace Art Awards would normally receive an overseas residency; these were suspended this year due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Instead there was a range of ten cash awards totalling $132,000. Held as usual at the Pah Homestead, the traditional crowded opening function also had to be a more restricted affair.

The exhibition of finalists and the salon des refusés comprised more than 70 works. The emphasis was on originality and style, with all eligible media represented. Nineteen artists from last year made the cut again, a sign of the popularity of the Award and the consistency of the judging, undertaken in 2020 by five artists who were all former Paramount Award winners.

Every reviewer will have his or her personal preferences, not necessarily in alignment with the judges’ selections. Only two of the eight award winners coincided with this writer’s choice and a few from the salon de refusés could have been finalists.

The Paramount Award of $52,000 went to Koruru (Knucklebones), a moody, densely resonant photograph by Russ Flatt. Senior painter Darryn George came in second with an unconvincing work in what is for him a new style, seemingly the justification for the prize. Glen Hayward’s faux gold water fountain, a replica from the Guggenheim Museum, with cigarette stubs amid the drops on the wide bowl (all made of wood), won the third award.

Maryrose Crook, whose sojourns overseas have lowered her profile here, showed a large allegorical painting, Herxing. With swirling clouds, deep perspectives, strange forms and creatures as well as a reflective symmetry between the upper and lower halves, this is a major work of baroque surrealism rewarding prolonged study; it fully justified its second runner-up award.

The other award winners were Martin Basher, Sam Harrison, Virginia Leonard and Wanda Gillespie.

Amongst the other finalists, worthy of special note was Andrew Rankin’s Still life of mass and void, an assembly of immaculately made kauri frames surrounding black plexiglass rectangles. It projected from the wall, but could just as well be seen on a table or dresser. Combining minimalism, constructivism and surrealism, it represented nothing but itself, yet was classic, elegant and timeless.

Morag Stokes’ , in graphite and Chinese ink on Yupo paper, was a virtuoso display of media manipulation,