Walters art prize goes to Newby

money, though. ‘‘ Corrections didn’t like the idea of taking responsibility for its actions with regards to staff,’’ Gilbert said. ‘‘But there’s much greater awareness of stress now.’’

Now in his 60s, Gilbert remains cagey about his health, but has one firm plan for the future – not to see the inside of any more courtrooms.

Gilbert said he took on the battle for one reason – justice. So was it served?

‘‘An approximation of

it.’’ KATE NEWBY has won art’s Walters Prize, awarded only every two years, for a work using pebbles, bottle caps and puddles.

Newby won $50,000 and a trip to New York for an artwork the judge described as the ‘‘least eloquent’’ entry.

The Auckland artist’s installation piece, Crawl out your window, includes a blue concrete ramp with small rocks, pebbles, bottle caps and puddles of water with leaves in them.

International judge, Tokyo’s Mami Kataoka, picked the work because of the way she communicated her ideas.

‘‘While Newby’s work is probably the least eloquent by making minimal interventions into the given space, it embraces memories of locations, her personal gestures and subtle actions. Viewers can relate to it through small objects embedded into the concrete ramp, and the materiality of the suspended fabric.’’

He said the way Newby used natural light, and the way the work came out of the museum space was ‘‘reserved but radical’’.

Newby studied at the Elam School of Fine Arts and joins former winners Yvonne Todd, Francis Upritchard, Peter Robinson, Dan Arps, and et al.

The Walters Prize is aimed at making contemporary art a more widely recognised and debated feature of cultural life.