German Film Festival opens in Auckland

Timed to coincide with the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the first ever German Film Festival in New Zealand opened at Auckland's Rialto Cinemas last night with November Child (Novemberkind). Directed by Christian Schwochow, the film is set against the backdrop of reunification which continues to be a rich source of inspiration for German filmmakers quarrying the past for stories about people whose lives were changed by the rise and fall of the Wall. November Child screens again at Rialto on Sunday 15 November at 4.30pm. It's a must-see film.

Image: Still from Novemberkind, directed by Christian Schwochow, German Film Festival brought to New Zealand by the Goethe-Institut, the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany (Wellington) and partners, November 2009

eyeCONTACT review

A review of Derrick Cherrie's exhibition is published here. The show runs in our project space until 28 November 09.

Image: Derrick Cherrie, Distribution of equivalents, 2009

A new space for art from Over The Net

In one of the more interesting moves we've seen in a while, Over The Net is opening On The Table, a new space for contemporary art in Wellington. Over The Net and On The Table are part of the Jim Barr and Mary Barr project—one that encompasses collecting, curating, art writing, blogging and now running their own art space. Details of the first show, which opens on 19 November 09, will be announced on their new blog for the space. 

Charity art auction fatigue

In the latest issue of artnews Sue Gardiner looks at the Art for a Cure auction held in Auckland arranged by the Breast Cancer Cure Trust. While it was successful, she says: "It was one, however, in an increasingly packed calendar of charity art auctions being held in Auckland, prompting discussions that, with so many options, perhaps the charity art dollar is being spread too thinly. Is there charity art auction fatigue out there?"

We also think it's time to look at the impact of charity art auctions on artists. Many, and especially those who are asked time and again, are tired of being the first port of call whenever there is a need to raise funds for a worthy cause. It's not because they don't support the cause or buy into the culture of giving, but rather because they believe charity auction organisers could ask others to stump up for a change.

An Auckland-based artist with a long history of willingly donating artworks to a local primary school for its annual art auction (his children attend the school) believes the organisers could also target parents to donate other forms of expertise to be auctioned. For example: a lawyer could donate the expertise and otherwise billable time required to set up a family trust; a dentist could offer free dental work for a year; a landscape architect could donate time to design an inner city garden or courtyard; and so on. There are many services that could be auctioned and sold to the highest bidder on the night. And let's not forget that in the case of the school's annual art auction the organisers could invite parents with art collections as well as artists to donate a work to the fundraising campaign.

Image: Peter Stichbury, Bic Runga, 2009, acrylic on linen, donated to the Cure for Cancer auction, Auckland, October 2009

Derrick Cherrie's collages

Derrick Cherrie's exhibition of collaged works on paper is showing in our Project Space to 28 November 09. You can read the exhibition release here.

Image: Derrick Cherrie, stacked & packed dark days poster, 2009

Post-recession art practice

While back-to-business-as-usual articles on the end of the recession and art market recovery are everywhere in the media, less column inches are being dedicated to making sense of the biggest shakeup the art world has experienced for a long time and what it means for the future. So it's refreshing to find an art journal addressing post-recession art practice.

In an editor's note to the current issue of Yishu|Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art, Keith Wallace says: "It has been repeatedly proclaimed that the economic crisis of the past year changed everything in the art world, yet Sotheby's October 2009 art auction in Hong Kong witnessed prices rebounding, and even on the increase, for contemporary Chinese art. In spite of that, the blip that did give rise to a much-needed reality check about what is genuinely important in contemporary art, resulting in artists and thinkers embarking on a journey in search of other realms of art that are less submissive to the market than they were in the past decade and more focused on exploring what it means to be making art in society today."

Each of the first four texts in issue 35 of Yishu address this historical moment relative to contemporary art in mainland China.

Image: Gao Shiqiang, Red, 2008 HDV, sourced from Yishu website

A new kind of boom

Jerry Saltz reports on the rise of a "don't-settle-for-business-as-usual dynamic" in New York Magazine. His piece was prompted by a series of events that included listening to Explaining Pictures to a Dead Bull, a send up of art history by a loose collective of young artists known as the Bruce High Quality Foundation. He says: "These human bullshit detectors aim to provide an alternative to everything—their mission is to call out an art world mired in irrelevance." You can read Saltz's article here.

Image: The Bruce high Quality Foundation's Explaining Pictures to a Dead Bull, sourced from the New York Magazine

Dane Mitchell: Minor Optics at the daadgalerie

Dane Mitchell's exhibition Minor Optics is showing at the daadgalerie, Berlin to 28 November 2009.

"Mitchell's investigations are primarily concerned with the marginal phenomena and transitions that largely escape ordinary (visual) perception. Using methods of scientific logic and experimental demonstrability, Mitchell leaves clues to these marginal areas and invents forms for making them visible and displaying them.

"The exhibition Minor Optics at the daadgalerie consists of two new works by Mitchell, both of which, in different ways, refer reflexively to the art space. Several electrostatically charged metal plates placed in the gallery space accumulate over the course of the exhibition dust particles, which can be seen on the glossy surfaces of the plates. In the study of the environment of art and the art space, dust represents all the things, organic and inorganic, that can occur, since almost nothing is free of dust.

"Working with the perfume maker Michel Roudnitska, Dane Mitchell developed a synthetic scent that corresponds closely to the smell of an empty exhibition space. Mitchell is trying to analyze the difficult-to-describe world of smells and thus provide information about what was previously unnamable or invisible.

"On the one hand, the exhibition Minor Optics draws attention to the spaces in which art is stored and presented and their conventional effects—very much in the spirit of a critique of institutional 'customs and pathologies'. At the same time, in the light of the exhibition's title and with Deleuze and Guatarri's concept of minor literature in mind, it introduces a tendency

to deterritorialization that blurs the boundaries and expands the limits of perception."

daadgalerie press release, 22 October 2009

Images: Dane Mitchell, Minor Optics, 2009, installations views, daadgalerie, Berlin.

Photographs: Kryzsztof Zielinski/DAAD

FEEDFORWARD - The Angel of History

Stella Brennan’s video projection South Pacific (2007) is showing in the exhibition FEEDFORWARD, The Angel of History curated by Steve Dietz and Christiane Paul. The exhibition runs at the LABoral Centre for Art and Industrial Creation, Gijon, Spain from 22 October 2009 to 5 April 2010.  

"The projects in FEEDFORWARD create a complex picture of the global political and social forces that drive us forward. The exhibition features both problematic aspects of the present and future, and the potential for collectivity and responsible action. At the nadir of the current economic crisis FEEDFORWARD is in effect about cleaning up after the 20th century and asks the question, what is progress now." From the LABoral release which you can read here.

Image: Stella Brennan with David Perry, South Pacific, 2007, Single Channel DVD, Stereo Sound, 10 minutes

ART HK 2010

Earlier this year we presented John Reynolds' table-based installation Table of Dynasties at ART HK 09. We'll be returning to the fair in 2010, this time with a group show including Shanghai-based artist Jin Jiangbo.

Images: ARTHK website masthead

Richard Orjis: last week

Richard Orjis' installation in our downstairs space closes on Saturday 7 November 09.

World Music Days, Beijing

Phil Dadson's BODYTOK (human instrument archive) is featured as one of three video installations during WORLD MUSIC DAYS in Beijing from 1 - 4 November 09. Hosted by the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, the festival/conference this year focuses on New Zealand and has 25 NZ artists/musicians/academics in the lineup.

Images: video stills from BODYTOK by Phil Dadson

Coming up at Starkwhite

Derrick Cherrie's exhibition of recent collaged works on paper runs in our Project Space from 2 to 28 November 2009. You can read the exhibition release here.

Image: Derrick Cherrie, King (2009), mixed media on 300gm Fabriano paper, 1000 x 705mm

Pacific 3 2 1 zero

The top image is of  a circular dome on Runit Island in the Pacific. According to theBrookings Institution, 111,000 cubic yards of radioactive soil and nuclear test debris from Bikini and Rongelap Atolls lie beneath this dome. Built between 1979 and 1980 at a cost of USD239m, it covers the 30ft deep 250ft wide crater created on 5 May 1958 by the Cactus test. 

The image below is of From Scratch, the legendary percussion group founded by Phil Dadson, performing Pacific 3 2 1 zero. First performed at the Paris Biennale in 1981, the work was a protest against nuclear testing and waste dumping in the Pacific. A film of Pacific 3 2 1 zero was made with Gregor Nicholas that won the Grand Prix at the Cannes/Midem Visual Music Awards in 1984.

Image: Phil Dadson, Pacific 3 2 1 zero (one of three images collectively titled Triads - ground plans, From Scratch 1980-1983), C-print photograph on metalic photographic paper, 1200 x 1200mm, edition of 3

Artists test limits in China

In a recent article Ian Johnson and Sky Canaves look at art and censorship in China. While most cultural activities in China are limited by censorship, contemporary art appears to have more leeway, a topic they explore in the article published here.

Image: Qiu Zhijie, Tattoo II, chromogen print, image from China Institute website

Richard Orjis installation views

Richard Orjis' exhibition runs in our downstairs space to 7 November 09.

Frieze reviews

Reviews of Frieze 09 are published here and here.

Image: John Baldessari, Beethoven's Trumpet (with Ear) OPus #133. Photograph Nils Jorgensen/Rex Features

Last ride in a hot air balloon

Last night the Auckland Art Gallery announced the theme and lineup of artists selected for the 4th Auckland Triennial curated by Natasha Conland. The exhibition, scheduled for 12 March - 20 June 2010, will once again be spread over several venues including the NEW Gallery (Auckland Art Gallery), St Paul St (AUT University) Artspace and the George Fraser Gallery (Auckland University School of Fine Arts). 

Located towards the end of the recent global economic recession, the 2010 Auckland Triennial explores the ongoing possibilities for risk and adventure in art. The exhibition uses the thematic territory of adventure as a cue to examine the capacity art has still to be broadly explorative of form, mind, body and vision, and does so alongside the traditional mode of geographic exploration with its hints of colonialism.

Throughout modernity's global expansion, and in recent market driven democracies, adventure has held a particular association with risk. Despite the collapse of the modern era, risk taking is still regarded as a necessary strategy for those in pursuit of the rewards born by adventure and exploration. For instance, in the economic practice of 'venture capitalism', 'adventure tourism', and 'survivor' style popular television dramas, risk-taking is broadly speaking, assumed as a necessary component of achieving personal and financial growth.

The theme of the Triennial investigates adventure and risk as productive tools in their own right within the field of art. However in so doing it moves beyond modernity's taste for expansion and at the moment of global economic contraction, to leave us with adventure and risk suspended as possibility. 

The artists exhibiting in the Triennial are: Nick Austin (New Zealand), Richard Bell (Australia), Martin Boyce (Scotland) Shahab Fotouhi (Iran/Germany), Shilpa Gupta (India), Marine Hugonnier (France/United Kingdom), Laresa Kosloff (Australia), Jorge Macchi (Argentina), Tom Nicholson (Australia), Philippe Parreno (France), Bundith Phunsombatlert (Thailand), Walid Sadek (Lebanon), Michael Stevenson (New Zealand), Bo Zheng (China/Hong Kong), Mahmoud Bakshi (Iran), Johanna Billing (Sweden), Gerard Byrne (Ireland), Alicia Frankovich (New Zealand), Robert Hood (New Zealand), Shigeyuki Kihara (Samoa/New Zealand), Learning Site, Alex Monteith (New Zealand), Mike Parr (Australia), Garret Phelan (Ireland), Olivia Plender (United Kingdom), Tino Sehgal (United Kingdom/Germany), and Tove Storch (Denmark).

Exhibition details from the 4th Auckland Triennial information pack.

Richard Serra's Te Tuhirangi Contour

In our final post on commissioned art we look at Richard Serra's 257m long Te Tuhirangi Contour. Commissioned by Alan Gibbs for his property (known as The Farm) on the Kaipara, it is the finest piece of site-specific sculpture in the country and one of many remarkable works situated in his art park. The lineup of international artists at The Farm includes: Daniel Buren, Andy Goldsworthy, Anish Kapoor, Sol LeWitt, Tony Oursler and George Rickey. 

You can read more on the art at The Farm in a conversation between Rob Garrett and Alan Gibbs published in Art World AUS/NZ edition.

Image: Richard Serra, Te Tuhirangi Contour, 1991-2001, weatherproof steel, 6m x 257m x 5cm, The Farm, Kaipara, NZ

Harbingers

Following our post on John Reynolds' environmentally savvy work Snow Tussock and an earlier post on the 10:10 campaign to slash carbon emissions by 10% during the year 2010, here are two striking images -  one of an iceberg spotted from a New Zealand shore for the first time in living memory (November 06) and the second of the recent dust haze that turned the Sydney sky red in September 09.