Rosy Parlane Performs at Auckland's New Gallery

The Auckland art collective were awarded the Walters Prize, New Zealand’s most prestigious and richest art award, at a gala dinner at Auckland Art Gallery on October 29th. The Walters Prize is awarded to an artist who has made an outstanding contribution to New Zealand art in the past two years.

In awarding the prize Judge Robert Storr, former senior curator at the Museum of Modern Art and director of the 2007 Venice Biennale, said:

"I had not seen this work - or work by this team of artists - before, and I was very very struck by it. It seems to me that it has a couple of basic ingredients, which one hopes to find in work of this kind. One, it has an idea, and two, it has a lot of feeling. There is the tendency to dichotomise - to say the mind is separated from feeling. But in this case, the challenge to think is also backed by a whole series of other factors - sound that is difficult to deal with but also powerful; words that are difficult to listen to but that also say something. You are put in a situation where you have to do two things that the world would like you not to do simultaneously - to make sense of something and also to absorb it."

The award comes hard on the heels of et al.’s controversial selection to represent New Zealand at next year’s Venice Biennale.

Et al. receives $50,000 from the Prize’s founding benefactors and principal donors, Erika and Robin Congreve and Jenny Gibbs, plus a return trip to New York courtesy of Saatchi & Saatchi. In New York, et al. will have the opportunity to exhibit work in their worldwide headquarters. All of the Walters finalists - et al., Jacqueline Fraser, Ronnie van Hout and Daniel von Sturmer – also received $5000 Finalist Awards from Major Donor Dayle Mace.

This is the second time the Walters Prize has been awarded. The first winner, in 2002, was Auckland photographer Yvonne Todd for her work Asthma and Eczema, 2001.

Rosy Parlane (aka Paul Douglas) is an Auckland musician who began playing music with the avant-garde rock trio Thela. Thela released two cds, 'Eponymous' and 'Argentina' on Thurston Moore's label Ecstatic Peace! He subsequently began working with abstract electronic-based music, both as a solo artist and as Parmentier with fellow Thela collaborator, Dion Workman. His soundscapes are comprised of of sample-loops, pianos, guitars, and field recordings manipulated via digital means. Parlane has released two solo albums on Sigma Editions, and a collaboration with Christian Fennesz on the Australian label, Synaesthesia.

www.aucklandartgallery.govt.nz

www.rosyparlane.com