Starkwhite presents immortalisation project at Art Basel Hong Kong

We'll be at Art Basel Hong Kong this week presenting THE IMMORTALISATION OF BILLY APPLE®, a ground-breaking project by artist Billy Apple® and artist/scientist Craig Hilton where art is in the service of science — Apple’s immortalised cell line is being used in studies that will directly benefit cancer and immunology research — and science serves the artist to enhance and protect the artist’s brand by immortalising his biological tissue in perpetuity. This transaction ensures that the brand (and the artist) can last forever, unconstrained by death. Read more...

Our presentation at Art Basel Hong Kong is with the assistance of Creative New Zealand.

This week at Starkwhite: Bazinga!

Our current exhibition Bazinga! continues this week to 8 June.

Image: Antoinette J. Citizen Sims Needs Meter, installation view. Curated by Robert Leonard, Bazinga! is a joint project by Starkwhite and the Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane.

Anne Landa Award exhibition opens at the Art Gallery of New South Wales

The fifth Anne Landa Award exhibition opens tonight at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. The space between us considers the relation between video and performance and features work by Lauren Brincat, Alicia Frankovich, Laresa Kosloff, Angelica Mesiti, Kate Mitchell, James Newitt and Christian Thompson. The artists are all eligible for the the acquisitive award of AUD$25,000, which sees the winning work enter the Gallery's collection.

Guest curator Charlotte Day says: "The seven artists are connected through their interest in the artist as performing body, the artist as creator /director of performances, and the viewer's role in relation to the works and as active participant. The resurgence in performative art continues out of a desire to question established exhibition and viewing habits, as well as the relative distinctions and distances between artist, artwork and audience." Read More...

New director of the Auckland Art Gallery announced

Rhana Devenport is the new director of the Auckland Art Gallery. Currently the director of the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery in New Plymouth, Devenport takes up her position at the end of July.
Image: Rhana Devenport

This week at Starkwhite

Our current exhibition Bazinga! continues this week to 8 June.
Image: Ross Manning, The Fixational Eye, 2011, installation view. Curated by Robert Leonard, Bazinga! is a joint project by Starkwhite and the Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane.

Bazinga! opens with a Botborg performance

Bazinga! opens on Saturday at 5.30pm with a live demonstration by the audio-visual performance group Botborg at 7pm. "Botborg present public demonstrations of the occult science of 'photosonicneurokineasthography', as pioneered by Dr Arkady Botborger sometime last century," says exhibition curator Robert Leonard. "Equal parts techno-boffins, psychic explorers, and experimental video-and-music makers, their pataphysical performances use video and sonic feedback to generate a Gesamtkunstwerk of synesthetic audio-visual effects in real time, coaxing patterns out of scrambled, collapsed signals."

Bazinga! is a joint project by Starkwhite and the Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane.
Image courtesy of Botborg

Gavin Hipkins' The Dam (O) premiers at international film festival

Gavin Hipkins' new short film The Dam (O), 2013 will premier at the Internationale Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen, an international film festival dedicated to short film as cinematic art. The Dam (O) stars leading New Zealand actor Matthew Sunderland and  incorporates naturalist and abstracted footage from Auckland’s five dams built during the 1920s.
Image: film still from Gavin Hipkins' The Dam (O), screening as part of CIRCUIT Artist Film and Video Aotearoa Market Screening at  the Internationale Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen

John Zorn live performances at the Met

In September the Metropolitan Museum will celebrate composer-performer John Zorn's birthday. A fixture on the downtown music scene since the 70s, Zorn has been an inveterate Metgoer since childhood and says he has drawn inspiration from a number of artworks there. His day will consist of 11 performances in 11 different rooms, in some cases in rooms by the very objects that inspired him and allowing visitors to see the Met through his eyes - not to mention hearing it through his ears!
Image: Cover for John Zorn's torture garden

Bazinga opens at Starkwhiite this weekend

IMA Director Robert Leonard has curated an exhibition for Starkwhite to coincide with the opening of the Auckland Triennial in May. Titled Bazinga!—the notorious catchphrase of Dr Sheldon Cooper from the TV sitcom The Big Bang Theory—the show will explore a nerd sensibility in recent Australian art. It will feature work that touches on science (especially astrophysics) and science fiction (particularly Star Trek); on mathematics and statistics; on technology, computers, computer games, and the internet; and on obsessive fandom, autistic behaviour, social awkwardness and inane pranks. The artists are Rebecca Baumann, Botborg, Antoinette J. Citizen, Gabrielle de Vietri, Danielle Freakley, Daniel McKewen, Ross Manning, Grant Stevens, and Stuart Ringholt.

Bazinga! opens Saturday 11 May at 5:30pm, with an audio-visual feedback performance by Botborg at 7pm, and runs until 8 June.
Image:Rebecca Baumann, Automated Monochome, 2011 (detail)

International Award for Public Art launched in Shanghai

Initiated by Shanghai University and co-founded by the two magazines Public Art (China) and Public Art Review (USA), the International Award for Public Art (IAPA) was launched in Shanghai last month with the aim of propagating knowledge about the practice of public art globally.

The theme of the first award was place-making and 141 projects from around the world were researched, including temporary and permanent projects. Six projects were shortlisted by an international jury with the award going to Venezuela's Tiuna el Fuerte Cultural Park, which the jurors described as "a vibrant work of creative genius."

The jurors for the inaugural award were: Lewis Biggs, chair of the organising committee of the IAPA and former director of the Liverpool Biennale; Jacker Becker, director of Forecast and publisher of Public Art Review; Fulya Erdemci, former director of SKOR/Foundation for Art and Public Domain and artistic director of the 2013 Instanbul Biennale; Yuko Hasegawa, chief curator at the Museum of Contemporary art in Tokyo and curator of the 2013 Sharjah Biennale; Katia Canton, professor of art theory and criticism/curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art, University of Sao Paulo; and professor Wang Dawei, dean of the Fine Arts College, Shanghai University and chief editor of Public Art (China).
Image: Tiuna el Fuerte Cultural Park, Caracas, Venezuela

Shanghai's international art fair cancelled or postponed?

As Shanghai continues to roll out new museums like the China Palace of Art and Powerstation (another 15 will open by 2015) SH Contemporary seemed poised to capitalise on the city's ambition to become a new global cultural hub. But a notice on ChinaExhibtion.com stating the 7th edition scheduled for September has been cancelled has raised questions about the future of the fair. A spokesperson for Bologna Fiere, which organises the show, told Art Radar Asia there are scheduling problems with when and where to hold the event, but offered no further detail saying updates would be posted on the event website at a later date.
Image: SH Contemporary 2012

Hou Hanru on the 5th Auckland Triennial: If you were to live here...

The 5th Auckland Triennial, If you were to live here... opens on 10 May. Curator Hou Hanru spoke to  the New Zealand Herald's Adam Gifford about his triennial as a platform for socially-engaged art and imagineering. "The Triennial is a space for producing new aesthetic forms and social spaces," he says. "It is not only an occasion to see art, but an interaction between artists, people and the city to envisage possible futures." Read more...
Image: Do-Ho Suh, A Perfect Home: The Bridge Project (2010), synchronised four-monitor animated slide presentation, 5th Auckland Triennial, If you were to live here...

Final week for Whitney Bedford's THIS for THAT exhibition

Whitney Bedford's THIS for THAT exhibition enters its final week at Starkwhite, closing Friday 3 May at 6pm. You can read an exhibition review here.

Image; Whitney Bedford, Bogeyman Landscape (smaller), ink and oil on panel, 22 x 26 inches, 2013. Photo: Evan Bedford

Director of 2014 Gwangju Biennale announced

Tate Modern curator Jessica Morgan has been named as the director of the 2014 Gwangju Biennale. Morgan was appointed as The Daskalopoulos Curator by the London museum in 2010 and has specialised in international art focusing on non-Western regions such as the Middle East and South America.
Image: Jessica Morgan

Turner Prize shortlist announced

David Shrigley, Tino Sehgal, Laure Prouvost and Lynnette Yiadom-Boakye are the contenders for this year's Turner Prize. Read more...
Image: David Shrigley's I'm Dead, 2010

Signing on for team Australasia

IMA director Robert Leonard has announced that he will step down at the end of the year to take up the position of Senior Curator at City Gallery Wellington. A self-confessed promiscuous collaborator, Leonard has given the IMA increased visibility by touring and co-producing exhibitions. "The IMA is a small gallery but we have achieved great things by working with others by pooling resources," he says. "I have developed great working relationships with other players throughout New Zealand and Australia. I now see myself as an Australasian-based curator. I want to maintain and mine these relationships in the future."

Back on the radar

We slipped off the radar during a visit to Shanghai where we ran into the great firewall of China. But we'll resume regular posts tomorrow.

A season of Cambodian art in New York

In April and May New York will host over 125 artists for Season of Cambodia, a citywide celebration of the country's arts and culture. The event includes IN RESIDENCE, a visual arts program inviting New York audiences to engage with the work of 10 artists and a curator. Anchored around two-month residencies for each of the participating artists, IN RESIDENCE also includes installations, screenings and open studios at institutions including MOMA, the Guggenheim and The Asia Society Museum.

Recently, the organisers of IN RESIDENCE, Leeza Ahmady and Erin Gleeson, spoke to Art Radar about the vision behind their program and their hopes for the legacy of the event back in Cambodia. Read more...
Image: Svay Sareth, Mon Boulet, 2012, performance documentation

Shigeru Ban's cardboard cathedral takes shape in Christchurch

The temporary cardboard cathedral designed by Japanese architect Shigeru Ban for the city of Christchurch should be completed this month. Made of cardboard tubes and covered with polycarbonate sheets to keep it watertight and allow daylight into the building, Ban's 9700-square feet, A-frame sanctuary will seat 700 worshippers providing a home for Anglicans while their quake-damaged cathedral is demolished and replaced. 

Three design options for a new cathedral have been released for public feedback: rebuilding the original cathedral, building a traditional timber construction or constructing a contemporary structure. Two public forums will be held this month and views on the designs will will be sought until early May when Church Property Trustees will select their preferred option.
Images: Construction of Shigeru Ban's cardboard cathedral underway in Christchurch (top); model of the temporary cathedral (bottom)

This week at Starkwhite

This for That by Los Angeles-based artist Whitney Bedford continues this week at Starkwhite to 4 May. You can read our press release here.

Image: Whitney Bedford, Orpheus towards Manukau, ink and oil on panel, 18 x 24 in., 2013. Photo credit: Evan Bedford