One man's trash is another man's treasure

Auckland artist Dane Mitchell's work "Collateral" won the Trust Waikato National Contemporary Art Award 2009, an award with $15,000 in prize money. According to the Herald, the competition is known for its "challenging" and "controversial" entries. Stories with any hint of controversy are usually linked quick-smart to a Your Views question and this one was no exception. Nothing like a stimulating debate in which users get to discuss the complex nature of contemporary art. Your Views asked: Is this creation art or trash?

Dark_Nyt (Helensville)
As the saying goes "one mans trash is another mans treasure", which seems to be the case here. Although this trash is just that, trash. True artists take time and commitment to create a piece of beauty, not sucker others into tipping rubbish into a pile and calling it art.

Hold on a second there Dark_Nyt. First you say we can all have an opinion on contemporary art, or indeed anything fitting the trash/treasure turn of phrase I guess. However, then you rule that Mitchell's work is simply "trash" leaving no room for it to be considered a "treasure"!

Alisha091 (Auckland)
TRASH! Who were the judges? The locals on K road?

I love how emphatically Alisha091 jumps at the chance to respond directly to the Your Views question, using capital letters and an exclamation mark to emphasise her choice. If we excuse the "locals of K road" comment, she does point towards the inadequate coverage of the event by the Herald through asking who the judges were.

In this thread of comments, the Forum Editor gets involved in order to give Anne from Glen Eden a bit of a telling off:

Anne (Glen Eden)
DR (Ellerslie) the problem with this ?work? is that I define art as ?human creative skill?.concerned with production of imitative and imaginative designs and expression of ideas?.contrasted with scientific technique or principal?. ?Art? has, in the modern world, become synonymous with social activism, like most other things. This ?work? may be social commentary. It is not ?art?. There may be those who think that?s a valid artistic pursuit. The art world has been clearly consumed by the concept or just by anything that?s weird or eccentric but I still prefer ?art? to be beautiful, to require toil, creativity and skill. It has nothing to do with socialism. It has everything to do with finding enough ugliness in the world and looking to ?art? to lift the human spirit. All that can be derived from this ?work? is, as someone said, that we would all be enlightened by taking a picnic lunch and bottle of wine to the local landfill for a day of reflection to marvel at the apparent creativity of those who generated it and those who dumped it. Whatever someone believes, there?s nothing imaginative or creative in this or in the social facts to enjoy

FORUM EDITOR'S NOTE: Anne, this is how your emails appear to us when they arrive. If you type you message directly into the Herald's message box, rather than cutting and pasting from another program, then the '?' marks will appear as apostrophes - as they should. Also, please check how long you messages are. 90 per cent of them cut off mid-sentence.

As a none-time poster but long-time reader of Your Views, I can say this is the first time I've seen such a thing! Poor Anne is publicly shamed in front of her fellow Your Views users. Surely the forum editor could have sent her an email? The inclusion of this note on Anne's post not only undermines what she has to say, but it makes visible the role of moderation in the forum and therefore serves a reminder that the Your Views editorial team have the ultimate say in how user responses are represented.