AUCKLAND, NZ.- Bring your togs and towel and prepare for a truly immersive experience at tonight’s opening of The Walters Prize 2006 at Auckland Art Gallery. A portable spa pool surrounded by whale sounds and psychedelic film sequences is the centrepiece of Wet Social Sculpture by Stella Brennan. The Auckland artist is one of four finalists for the $50,000 Walters Prize New Zealand’s richest and most prestigious contemporary art award. The winner will be announced on 3 October by international judge Carolyn ChristovBakargiev. Brennan blends the backyard with the transcendent to offer up the spa pool as a symbol of suburban luxury and wellpadded alienation “the leisure class in a capsule, cocktail in hand”.

Napierborn artist Phil Dadson camped out in the Dry Valleys of Antarctica with video and sound equipment to record Polar Projects his unique interpretation of a remote and surreal region that looks and sounds like no other.

Ashburtonborn Peter Robinson’s work has always been a challenge to good taste. His sculptures represent The Humours blood, bile and phlegm. In traditional medicine these fluids were thought to permeate the body, influencing health and personality.

New Plymouthborn artist Francis Upritchard tampers with history in Doomed, Doomed, All Doomed. Cast off items like old hockey sticks gain new life with eyes and crooked teeth. Thrift store pots are remade into urns as Upritchard reveals the fear behind our efforts to hold on to the past.

The Walters Prize 2006 exhibition is on view through 19 November. The $50,000 Walters Prize, modeld on the Tate Britain’s Turner Prize, is awarded for an outstanding contribution to contemporary art in New Zealand in the past two years. Previous winners were et al. in 2004 for restricted access and Yvonne Todd in 2002 for Asthma and Eczema. Named in honor of artist Gordon Walters, the prize was established in 2002 by founding benefactors and principal donors Erika and Robin Congreve and Jenny Gibbs to make contemporary art a more widely recognized and debated feature of New Zealand cultural life.