'A resilient heart like the mānawa' by artist Ana Iti. Photo: Ana Iti
A sculptural and sonic installation inspired by the Hokianga has won New Zealand's biggest and most prestigious contemporary art award.
'A resilient heart like the mānawa', by artist Ana Iti, was named the winner of the 2024 Walters Prize in Auckland on Friday night.
The award, which is named after New Zealand artist Gordon Walters, focuses on an outstanding body of work made within a two-year period. The winner receives a $50,000 cash prize.
Iti (Te Rarawa) said in an Instagram post that the work came from "a desire to spend time and make work in Hokianga-nui-a-Kupe - a place of arrival and departure - and to think about the wharf, a structure that stands between the land and the sea".
International judge Professor Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung chose Iti's work from a shortlist of artists nominated by an independent jury.
He said Iti's work "shares something in common with great poetry".
"The concreteness of metals of the de-concretised wharf infrastructure that stand majestically in the gallery express the weight of histories of industry, of extractivism, of capitalism, of the colonial enterprise and of connections in Rāwene, that was transformed into a timber town with a mill and shipyards in the early 1800s."
'A resilient heart like the mānawa' is on display at Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki until 20 October.
Mark Amery talks to Walters Prize international judge Professor Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung on Culture 101 on Sunday afternoon.
