The Wetness of Rain

Two of the Walters Prize finalists do one thing, and two another. Sonya Lacey and Sriwhana Spong make art that revolves around themselves, and their installations are collections of parts. The works of Fiona Amundsen and the Mata Aho Collective/ Maureen Lander, on the other hand, reflect many voices, coordinated into a total entity. Lacey and Spong use multiple mediums across works that variously intrigue, delight, impress and perplex. You first respond to the things in the space, and to what the materials are doing, before making sense of them (unless you have read a good deal beforehand). Then comes the backstory, filling in the gaps with complicated histories within which the artists are at once insignificant and central figures.

With Amundsen and the Mata Aho Collective/ Lander, there is no such separation or lag between material and meaning. The things embody histories and knowledge, and, in Amundsen’s case especially, readily release their content—gradually, to be sure, but continually. If you stay with the work, you will understand it (and feel it), just as when you stand in the rain you get wet.

The fact that, due to Covid-19, this year’s Walters Prize is actually last year’s means that the customary bickering over the selection process is already