Award Winning Artist Exhibiting at Christchurch Art Gallery

1 August 2008

New Zealand-born artist Daniel Crooks, whose everywhere instantly exhibition is currently on display at Christchurch Art Gallery, has just won a major Australian art prize.

Yesterday, the Melbourne-based artist was awarded the inaugural $100,000 Basil Sellers Art Prize for his digital video piece Static no.11 (running man). This almost life-sized work features Crooks’ trademark ‘timeslice’ treatment of champion sprinter Christopher Brown running on a treadmill. The piece was singled out for victory from a field of fifty-four works by sixteen artists.

Despite previous exhibitions throughout Australia and internationally, everywhere instantly is the first time that Crooks’ extraordinary video works have been screened in New Zealand. From the mesmerising thirteen-metre-wide screening of Train no.1 to his serene recent series, Imaginary Objects, this spectacular exhibition has been a huge success with New Zealand audiences.

‘This is an opportunity for New Zealanders to see some extremely innovative work from an artist who is receiving very credible international recognition for his work’, says Blair Jackson, Visitor Experience Manager at Christchurch Art Gallery.

Born in Hastings in 1973, Daniel Crooks is a graduate of the Auckland Institute of Technology and the Victorian College of the Arts School of Film and Television. In 1997 he received an Australia Council Fellowship to research motion control at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. Crooks’ works have appeared in ‘Primavera 2003’ at Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art as well as exhibitions in Europe, the UK, the United States and Asia. He has held solo exhibitions at Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten, Amsterdam (2005); Level 2 Projects Space, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney (2005); and the Centre for Contemporary Photography, Melbourne (2002). He was artist-in-residence at the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten, Amsterdam (2004–5) and at the Australia Council Studio, London, UK (2005). His numerous awards include the 2001 City of Stuttgart Prize for Animation and an Australian Short Film Award at the 1996 Sydney International Film Festival. He is represented by Anna Schwartz Gallery, Melbourne.

Daniel Crooks: everywhere instantly will be at Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetu from 18 July until 9 November 2008.

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