Andre Hemer won The National Contemporary Art Award of New Zealand

Last weekend Andre Hemer received the National Contemporary Art Award of New Zealand, arguably the most important art award of NZ, awarded at the Waikato Museum. His work touches many recent and relevant issues of art and it’s reception, and remains ambiguous throughout.

“His wall-painting includes a QR (quick response) code which, when scanned by an iPhone or barcode scanner, will provide visitors with a hyperlink locating the exact position of famed artist Jackson Pollock’s painting of the same name.

Pollock’s abstract work, valued around $40 million, hangs inside the National Gallery of Australia.

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“But technology, being what it is, sometimes doesn’t work properly and people won’t be able to scan my work successfully,” he said. “I’m really interested in those failures and the reactions people will have to my work.”

Hemer said less technically savvy museum visitors could appreciate his painting on a different level. “I’m very interested in the reactions of the techno-phobic nanas who may be frustrated by my work and just see it as an abstract painting. Everyone will look at my work differently and that’s one of my intentions. My work can be something which is interactive or something which is static and abstract.”

Award judge John Hurrell said (…) the work’s coding mechanism challenged the traditional ideals of painting. “It extends the notion of painting using a technology that takes painting beyond a traditional way of covering canvas with paint. It looks like water on the sea, it’s got an impressionistic feel about it but it also takes you through to this icon, to where this famous painting is stored in Canberra.”

Via the Waikato Times

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